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FACTS 



MESMERISM, 



ANIMAL MAGNETISM 

WITH REASONS FOR 
A DISPASSIONATE INQI IRT INTO IT. 

BY THE 

B BARE TOWHSHfcND, A.M., 

ITl ii\n. C11 






W ITH AN A IT I 



LINING THE i i r THE I COMMITTEE OH 



BOSTON: 

CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. 

MDCCCILI. 






Gift 

W. 1*. Shoemaker 

7 S '06 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY FREEMAN AND BOLLES, 

WASHINGTON STREET. 



u 



(7( 



ADVERTISEMENT 



TO THE BOSTON EDITION. 



rt 



A cottbse of Lectures on M \ or Animal Magnetism^ 

accompanied with an exhibition of its effects, has recently 
been delivered in this city by Dr. Collyer. The public atten- 
tion, which lias by this mean- been attracted to the subject, 
has the publication of an American edition of 

Pro!' twnshend't work. It was proposed at first to 

omit a co le portion of the volume, that it might thus 

be ma<lc cheaper, and obtain a wider circulation* ljut, on 
further reflection, this is abandoned, and a complete 

reprint determined upon, without n< >mment, and sim- 

ply with the addition of i t. The principal 

inch led to lb de81gn W88, a conviction 

that Mr. Townshend is a writer of no ordinary character and 
power: and that few of those who might feel desirous ofpos- 

Lisfied with B mutilated copy. 
lion and 

belief, that the whole id character of the work are 

such a- will ':. elevate the subject of 

Hesmerii re the low ami vu! . on which it lias 

too often been pr« at least upon respect- 

able footing. And even thosewho may continue to be incrcd- 
ulou 1 to the reality of the Metnierie phenomena^ may 

yet be gratified and instructed by the penetration, the sagacity, 
the sound learning and the liberal philosophy, which are 
brought to bear upon and elucidate the subject; as well as 
warmed and improved by the deep moral feeling and tone of 
religious sentiment, by which the whole is pervaded. 



INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. 



TO JOHN ELLIOTSON, M.D. Caotab. F.R.S. 

Mv hi.\K Sir, 

Oh seeing thai 1 dedicate the following pa{ 
to you, the world will, perhaps, be kind enough to 
— "Here is a Coalition!" [not the less fear- 
lead] place the work under jrour auspices; trusting 
that some persons at least may conceive that two 
may be of one mind on a subject, and jrel guiltless 
of a conspiracy against Church or State — Truth 01 
Sci- no . Ami what if we are ranged under the same 
banner] Union is not Treason; — and I trust that 
there is no harm in our being equally impressed with 

onviction of the reality of Mesmerism, and equally 
animated bj a resolution to disclose honestly that 
winch we know certainly. Here, then, is our coali- 
tion — if any one bo chooses to term it. — a coalition 

to defend truth — and not to spread imposture. 

Perhaps, however, it may be as well to state (lest wo 
should leave too much to the sagacity of those who 
smell a plot in everj thing), that I have pursued my 
mesmerical researches entirely apart from four self; 

nay. on the oth«r side of the Channel ; and that, vet 
more, we were but recently made acquainted, by 
letter only — through the medium of a mutual friend, 
who is not a mesmeriser, hut a public functionary 



VI INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. 

and man of letters. Again : let it be known that I 
never had the pleasure of seeing you till within the 
last two months ; though, indeed, I must add, that I 
think it a loss not to have made your acquaintance 
earlier. It was said of some great man — Burke, I 
think, — that you could not stand up with him under 
a shed during a shower of rain, without finding out 
that you were in company with a fine genius. The 
remark may be applied, with some diversity, in most 
cases. Our first impressions of persons are often an 
instinctive judgment, of which our after feelings 
towards them are only a development ; and. with 
regard to yourself in particular, I am not singular 
in remarking, that to converse with you, but for a 
quarter of an hour, is to carry away a pledge of your 
honor as a gentleman, and of your sincerity as 
man of principle ; and this, independently of the 
knowledge that, to the cause of truth, you have made 
every sacrifice except that of integrity. I must sp< 
my opinion, — though at the risk of being suspected 
of flattery. You, at least, shall not have the credit 
of countenancing the panegyric, as this letter will 
only be read by you on the day it is given to the 
public. 

These things ought to be known : — for they are 
testimony to mesmerism. Here are two persons, in 
different countries, wholly unconnected, setting out 
on an inquiry by different paths, and yet meeting, at 
length, in one common conclusion and point of union. 
As regards myself, 1 may affirm that no one could 
possibly have taken up and pursued a subject more 
independently, or in a more unbiassed manner than 



INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. Vll 

I have taken up and pursued mesmerism. I have 
not drawn my ideas of it from books, but from expe- 
rience : I have even abstained from reading articles 
on it. lest I should lose the originality and freshness 
of personal observation. But I need not insist on 
this. 

My \\«>rk itself contains internal testimony that 
our coincidence of opinion i- honest, not concerted ; 
— lor. in truth, we differ while wc agree. I have 
not described, because I have never seen, the curious 
delirium, and coma, which some of your patients 
have* displayed. Nol being myself of the medical 
profession, I have naturally treated mesmerism as a 
phenomenon of our nature, rather than as a curative 
means; and the maladies, which you have bo sue- 
rfully combated by the n« w v. have of 

course produced modifications in in action, which 
the healthy subjects to whom I have confined my 
pra< Jd not have displayed. However various 

the i neric d tents portrayed 1>\ 

me, the principal a of the have been 

similarly eh <•<[ throughout, inv object being 

to delineate that species of mesmeric sleepwaking, 
which, I conceive, ma) be i/i</</r<<i. to a certain ex- 
tent, in an}- indifferent person. So tar we arc shown 
as drawing from separate and independent source 
and this involuntary kind oftestimonj is favorable to 
our cause : but, inseparable from this benefit, is a col- 
lateral disadvantage, on which I must briefly touch. 

The greater part of the London. I may say of the 
English, world, have derived their ideas of mesmer- 
ism from i/our experiments, which so many have 



Vlll INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. 

personally witnessed. Hence the general reader, 
comparing his preconceptions on the subject with the 
portrait I have set before him, may surmise that the 
new science is not in unity with itself, confounding, 
by a very common mistake, diversity with discre- 
pancy. But, in truth, while there is much that is 
different in our facts, there is nothing whatever that 
is contradictory. The subject is large, and cannot 
but present itself in various points of view to various 
observers. Even where we most appear to disagree, 
it must be remembered that the same phenomenon 
may have more than one phasis, just as the celebrated 
shield, that was black on one side, was not the less 
certainly white on the other. Thus, it is very true 
that a kind of delirium may be developed under 
mesmeric influence, while, at the same time, it is 
capable of eliciting the highest state of moral and 
intellectual advancement, to which man. in this ex- 
istence, can probably attain. This remark is the 
more necessary to be made, inasmuch as, through- 
out my work, I have labored to prove the mesmeric 
condition a rise on our actual mode of being; and. 
according to the view I have taken of the subject, 
if it be not this, it is nothing. For what does a 
writer achieve, who does not contribute, in how- 
ever small a measure, to the hopes and welfare of 
humanity ? 

It has struck me that the world, who is very fond 
of proving that an author did not write his own book. 
may inquire — What share had Dr. Elliotson in this 
treatise ? I therefore think it not perhaps altogether 
useless to state, that neither yourself, nor any body 



INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. IX 

else, has dictated or suggested to me one opinion 
which is therein contained. The only debt that I 
have to acknowledge, is on the trilling score of some 
advice respecting the terms to he employed in writing 
on this particular subject You observed to me. that 
the phraseology of mesmerism could not too soon be 
fixed, and rendered pi and you suggested the 

substitution of Mesmeric Sleepwaking for Induced 
nnambulism, on the ground thai Somnambulism, 
strictly speaking lot always, nor necessarily, an 

adjunct of the condition [ wished to describe. In all 
other respects, the faults or merits of the publication 
must b '1 on my own I For the former, 

indeed, as probably numerous, few persons would 

like to 1 : and on their account 

I ders, in 

ider which the 
work was composed; one part being despatched from 
abroad to the printer, while other portions were mit- 
ten at distant intervals, as health and opportunity 
permitted. I know not. however, whether, on the 

whole, a residence on the Continent has not been 

favorable to the consideration of such a subject as 

mesmerism; for I can assure my countrymen that 
their own prejudices respecting it are no measure of 
the reception which it meets with from enlightened 

foreigner?. I have scarcely conversed with one per- 
son of education in Germany, who was not able to 
detail to me some interesting fact relating to mesme- 
rism which had been personally witnessed and authen- 
ticated ; and every where abroad, during those travels 



X INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. 

which in search of health I have undertaken, my in- 
formation respecting this remarkable phenomenon of 
our nature has been extended. Opportunities also 
of mesmerising different individuals (many of them 
distinguished for rank and science) have been freely 
and agreeably accorded me. Since I sent to Eng- 
land a list of the persons I had mesmerised, I have 
experimented on some thirty others at Rome, Naples, 
&c., and I have still found the proportion stated in 
my work of mesmerisable individuals singularly pre- 
served, and the phenomena exhibited perfectly ac- 
cordant with previous observation. 

But I am insensibly converting a letter to you into 
an address to the general reader, and I perceive I 
have so far extended a dedication as to render a 
preface unnecessary. For this service, at least, let 
me thank you. I have always thought prefaces very 
troublesome things to write. And are they not. in 
fact, pieces of falseness throughout ? standing first, 
though written last — expressing a humility which 
the author does not feel — and claiming the especial 
attention of every body, while it is a wonder if they 
are read by any body. I therefore not unwillingly 
take this opportunity of making my introductory 
bow to the Public, while at the same time I beg you 
to believe me, my dear sir, 

With sentiments of high respect. 
Yours very sincerely, 

C. Hare Townshend. 
Innspruck, Nov. 25, 1S39. 



CONTENTS 



BOOK I. 

Tage. 
Review of the Causes that have made Mesmerism unpopular, 

and which render it a Subject difficult to be treated ] 

BOOK II. 

SECT. I. 
Mesmeric Somnambulism, or, mure properly, Sleepwalking 45 

SECT. II. 
Showing the elaima of Mesmeric Bleepwaking to be consid- 
ered a peculiar Condition of Man 85 

SECT. III. 

Showing certain of the physical and metaphysical Conditions 

of Mesmeric Bleep* thing 130 

BOOK HI. 

SECT. I. 

Conformity of Mesmerism with our general Experience 2G1 

SECT. II. 
On the Mesmeric Consciousness 284 

SECT. III. 

On Mesmeric Sensation 31 1 

SECT. IV. 

On tiie Medium of Mesmeric Sensation 377 

BOOK IV. 

The Mesmeric Medium 395 

APPENDIX. 

Report of the Boston Committee on Animal Magnetism 525 



MESMERISM, 



ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 



BOOK I. 

ihi: CAl BES tii \r n w I M ami: KE8ME&I8M 
UNPOPULAR, \M> WHICH RENDEB it a SUBJECT 

Dinii i 1.1 TO BE t I 

Having bad man] opportunities of convincing my- 
self that man can i< ally influence his fellow in the 

manner called mesmeric, 1 have determined to ar- 
range and classify the phenomena, relative to this 
influence, which have fallen under nay observation, 
in the hope of reducing them to a few simple and 
general principles. In thus coming forward, 1 am 
fully aware of the obstacles which I have to encoun- 
ter. The fatal word Imposture has tainted the sub- 
ject of my inquiry ; and Ridicule, which is not the 
test of truth, has beep pressed into the service of 
talent, in order to annihilate the supposed absurdity 

before the dread ordeal of a laugh. 



MESMERISM. 



But it is not only the witty who have set up mes- 
merism as the mark of their fine arrows ; men of 
science have attacked it, because they could not 
make it harmonize with their preconceived notions ; 
and many of the Galens of our day, instead of wisely 
taking it under their patronage, and into their own 
hands, have treated it with a desperation of hostility : 
— as if, were it allowed to flourish, their glory was 
tarnished and their " occupation gone." 

What is worse, some of the friends and supporters 
of mesmerism have done it more disservice than it- 
bitterest foes. Instead of Betting before the world 
the simplest features of the new discovery, the] have 
at once produced to view its most astounding marvels, 
thus dazzling into blindness the eyes which, by a 
more cautious conduct, they might have taught to 
see. Then it cannot be denied that the name <>f 
Mesmerism, or Animal bfagnetism, has sometimes 
served as a watchword to exploded quackery and 
impudent deceit: and who does not know how diffi- 
cult it is to separate the merits of any doctrine from 
the faults of its partisans"; Mesmerism has occa- 
sionally been found in company with the vicious and 
the designing ; and its good repute has suffered ac- 
cordingly. 

Another circumstance has contributed to the dis- 
grace of this unfortunate subject. In its palmy daj B, 
when De Maineduc plunged his visionary fing 
into the stomachs of gouty earls and dyspeptic mar- 
chionesses, nothing less was expected from the new 
remedy than the renovation of human nature, and 
an absolute conquest over all diseases. That it should 



MESMERIC. O 

subsequently full into oblivion, will not astonish those 
who have observed the invariable fate of every fash- 
ionable panacea — of Peruvian bark, for example. 
From thinking that it can perform everything, men 
doubt whether it is capable of anything; and the 
more extravagant have been the hopes which it has 
excited, the more deep is the disgust which disap- 
pointment naturally creates. 

But mesmerism has been looked upon as worse 

than false or DUgatDry. Many, who have believed 

in its powers, have believed only to tremble. Cre- 
dulity has done it worse service than incredulity. 
It has been proscribed as an unholy thing; books 
have been written upon its dangers ; the good Cath- 
olic crosses himself when he name- it ; and the 

ful Protestant 9 even if he hesitat* s to brand it as 
diabolical, think- at least that ii may be prostituted 
to evil purposes. A.nd bo it undoubtedly may be. 
But thru the same objection applies to all that is most 
beneficial upon earth. All great engines are capable 
ot great p« rversion. This is tacitly allowed in the 
whole conduct of life. Jfel we do not abstain from 
the use of fire because it can destroy, nor from the 
medical application of laudanum because it is a 
poison. 

That the world's quarrel against mesmerism should 
be so verj bitti i. is hardly accounted for by any of 
the foregoing considerations. Primd facie, one would 

that there were attractions in this despised doc- 
trine, more than sufficient to countervail every ob- 
jection that might be brought against it. Fond lis we 
are ot" the shadowy and the unknown, its very mys- 



4 MESMERISM. 

tery might seem congenial to our nature ; and even 
those vague suspicions concerning its sinfulness which 
hover darkly around it, might be supposed to have a 
charm for man — the wilful — who rushes to the for- 
bidden with so keen a zest. But there is a sort of 
unexplained odium attached to mesmerism, which 
quells curiosity and deadens interest. From this 
odium it appears almost necessary that I should n 
my subject, before entering fully upon it : I must 
secure a hearing before I can plead my cause : I 
must show that there is in it. If no inherent fault, 
which can justly exclude it from B (air and candid 
examination. This end, as it appears to inc. I shaD 
best attain by exposing the primary causes which 
have degraded mesmerism; and !>v showkig thai 
these are extrinsic to itself. 

Having done this, 1 propose, also, to touch upon 
the reasons that make the subject 1 have chosen not 
only distasteful to the genera] reader, but of e\trem« 
difficulty to the Author himself. 

First. The original cause of the ill reception which 
mesmerism has met with from the world. i< undoubt- 
edly to be found in the character of its discover* r — 
Mesmer, — in his want of candor and philosophic 
strictness. Had it been introduced to notice bj a 
Newton or an Arago, by one who would have Stat 
his facts honestly, and drawn from them none but 
legitimate conclusions, the difference erf its car 
may be estimated by all who are aw are how much 
depends upon a propitious beginning. Hut unfortu- 
nately, from the very outset, mesmerism was ftSSO* 
ciated with the soiling calculations of self-intepM, 



MESMERISM. 5 

and the errors of an over-heated brain. Mesmer 
wished to make a monopoly of that which should 
have been the property of all mankind: he sold his 
secret — he bartered for gold his future tame and 
the reputation of his fading subject; 1 and. Losing 
the light which emanates only from an upright spirit, 
he became the dupe of his own miracles, bo miserably 
to Burroilnd his really simple and sublime discov- 
er] with fictitious terrors and misleading puerilities, 

The result of this moral and 8CW lltific suicide has 

been the degradation of im. First associa- 

tions are, from the verj law of our minds, all but 
indestructible; and therefore it is that with a few 
original thinkei to replace the 

subject on its true and ive footing — namely, 

its own merits. The false teas been to blended with 
the true, that it is no wonder that both should be 
rejected togi ther. Tin come not :<> us pure, 

hni from a fountain head that is itself disturbed and 
sullied ; bo that, instead of ling forth into a lu- 

cid mirror, reflecting h< aven and earth, and enliven- 
ing all around, thej fee in a thick and blinding 
marsh. Had mesmerism been announced to the 
world, not as a studied enigma, but in the form of a 
simple proposition ; had all men been invited to test 
the truth erf the principle, and to investigate the laws 
of n- operation ; had it been practised in unostenta- 



1 Injustice t«> the memory of Mesmer, it should be stated that 

against tin* tact <>!' b 9 liundn d 

louii to each candidate foi initiation, should i ertain ejet* 

at'mir circumstances, srhich are related in Mr. Colquhoun's Isis 
Rerelata, vol. i. p. 2 

r 



O MESMERISM. 

tious privacy instead of crowded assemblies ; had 
there been in the chambers devoted to its service, 
neither mystical machines nor exciting music, no 
convulsionaries, no hysterical women ; had mesmer- 
ism from the first appeared that which it eminently 
is — a spirit of calmness and of reason ; then had it 
interested the scientific and conciliated the wise ; 
then had it been transmitted to the present age pure 
and unenveloped by the mists of prejudice. The 
mere fact that man can produce a kind of dumber 
in his fellow-man by a few and simple means, 
surely not to be confounded with the heap <>t absur- 
dities attached to it. To say that the one ia inextri- 
cably and necessarily linked with the other, were 
want of sense as well as of candor : and. unless we 
choose to admit a principle which would [pake even 
our religion answerable for the sins committed in it- 
name, we must allow that mesmerism ifl in no way 
affected either by the errors of its partisans 01 the 
prepossessions of its enemies. 

Secondly. As mesmerism was ill-omened in its 
birth, so also was it unfortunate in its baptism,. 
Shakspeare's often-quoted query finds here, if no 
where else, its answer : — and we are forced to reply 
— There is much in a name, except where true love 
or true philosophy renders the mind insensible to 
those externals which are all in all with the general- 
ity of mankind. 

The disservice rendered to mesmerism by its name. 
is this: — It has turned men from true inquiry, and. 
like a tub thrown out to the whale, has served a- an 
object of attack, while the real point in debate has 



MESMERISM. 7 

remained untouched altogether. We have asked 
whether such a power BE mesmerism exists; when 
we should rather have demanded whether there is a 
statt so denominated. It will at once he seen in 

what material respects the two questions differ. The 
first presumes, even while it professes to seek, a 

cific cause for certain phenomena; — the second 
merely regards the phenomena themselves, and in- 
quires — Do such and such foots exist! Bach in- 
quiry should be kept carefully distinct, and vet they 
have uniortunan l\ been mixed up together ; or rather 
an unhappy priority has been granted to the fust, in- 
volving the rery existence of the second. For it is 
plain that when wr demand, " I- there such a power 
as mesmerism?" the answer may ever be - A T o ; " 
and then, b common injustice, we extend the 

ative ovei the n bole question, there being but 
f< \\ who will n<»i confound b mistake and the object 
mistaken in one general anathema. EHd ire, bow- 

r, clearlj perceive that " Power i§ nothing more 
than the relation of one object, or event, as invaria- 
bly antecedent to anothei objed <>r event/ 3 ' we 
should perceive thai thi called mesmeric, have 

as much claim to !><• considered realiti< b, as if indeed 
there hh n a magnetic power 01 influence. 

( tf the error of the mesmerists in bestowing an ill- 
judged appeUatkm, the opposite party have taken 
ample advantage. They have thrust forward the 
unl men into the very van of discussion, 

and have thus compelled an inquiry into the cause 

»wn'l Philosophy of the Human Mind. 



8 MESMERISM. 

of mesmerism, before the phenomena could be well 
considered. Surely it must be conceded that so 
singular an inversion of true philosophical investiga- 
tion cannot but have proved highly detrimental to 
the subject of our discussion. In what other matter 
have we acted so strangely as to inquire into the se- 
cret cause, before men are well agreed respecting 
the visible effects ? Do we not, in conducting an 
important analysis, first ascertain the phenomena, 
their characteristics, and the circumstances under 
which they appear ; and then, after long and (archil 
induction, name — but with caution — sonic pervad- 
ing principle into which they may all be harmoni- 
ously resolved? Not only is it natural thus to com- 
mence a course of reasoning with what is nearest to 
our apprehensions, but, by so doing, we secure that 
essential requisite to an argument — a firm and un- 
debatable ground, where both lie who would con- 
vince, and he who is to be persuaded, may meet as 
on a neutral territory, and. taking a common point 
for starting, be advantaged with at least a probability 
of arriving at a common conclusion. Pacta arc this 
neutral ground ; — tacts are this point o( vantage : — 
for it is to be remarked that respecting outward and 
visible phenomena there is ordinarily but little differ- 
ence of opinion, while, in reference to hidden can-.-. 
men ever are and must be divided. For instance, 
every one knows the sensation of light, and may 
convince himself, if he pleases, that under such and 
such circumstances, such and such phenomena do 
occur. So far mankind are agreed : but when we 
would assign the primary cause of light and its phe- 



MESMERISM. \) 

nomena. we find the war commenced, and opinions 
for divided — some adopting the undulatory theory, 
while others fondly cling to the Newtonian doctrine 
of emitted n 

It ig do wonder, then, that the premature assump- 
tion of a specific cause for the phenomena of mes- 
meric somnambulism should have shocked men in 
the outset, and have indisposed them, through the 
medium of their prejudices, tor calm investigation. 
Under this head of offence may he classed, also, such 
technical expr< - "magnetised water." "mag* 

netised tree-.*' Ac. The ideas, which these terms 

convey, are vague and unpleasing. Who can tell 

that thrir Humming miiij>I\ i-. — water, or trees, 

breathed upon, or touched l>\ the band, after a cer- 
tain formula: Th< vocabulary of «\ti\ science has 
been, to the uninitiated, foolishness; — but the no- 
menclature of mesmerism is worse: it has been a 

re-crow even to the \\ ise. 

I confess that of all the causes, which have con- 
tributed to render mesmerism unpopular, this is to 
me the most discouraging. To make a dispute ver- 
bal is to make it endless, and the erroneous way in 
which our subject ha- been considered] has transferred 
its merits from things to words — a sad and barren 
— All hope of an accommodation between 
the friends and foes of mesmerism is thus rendered 
doubtfuL How, indeed, can they calmly discuss the 

matter, when the first hare mention of it i^ a sort of 

Slogan or battle-yell, that raises a conflict sufficient 

to drown the voice of Reason for ever? How shall 
they decide a truth, whose late depends upon the 



10 MESMERISM, 

propriety or impropriety of its name? How shall 
they adjudge the real business in hand , seeing that 
preliminaries can never be adjusted ? The subject 
has indeed fallen into the very Chancery Court of 
Philosophy. 

That men should be so easily entrapped into pur- 
suing a shadow, while the substance has eluded their 
observation, may seem strange ; but, words being the 
media of our thoughts, we are naturally so influenced 
by them that even the most clear-judging find it diffi- 
cult not to be diverted by a verbal inaccuracy from 
more important matters. The fate of Hartley's The- 
ory of Sensation is a proof of this. All the world 
fastened so vehemently upon the unlucky term u vi- 
bration," and were so intent upon proving that the 
soft and loose chords, which compose the nervous 
system, could never properly be said to vibrate, that 
the true merits of a very beautiful hypothesis \\ 
overlooked. 

Thirdly. Nearly connected with the erroneous 
naming of mesmerism, is the circumstance next in 
order, which lias thrown a blight over its preten- 
sions, — I mean the decision, in its disfavor, of the 
French Academy, in 1784. Since then, it has been 
considered as worse than unexamined ; — it has been 
conceived to have undergone examination, and to 
have been found worthless. Since then, to revive an 
interest upon such a condemned subject has been 
nearly as impossible as to restore life to a corpse by 
galvanism. Since then, instead of a mystery, it has 
been regarded as a delusion : and the world has 
turned away from it with the same sort of fiat disap- 



MESMERISM. 11 

pointment which we experience, when, after having 
trembled at the haunted chambers, dusky veils, and 
heaving coverlids of a romance, we are chilled into 
our sober senses by the earthly explanations of its 
concluding pages. The magician's wand is broken 
forever: we like to be frightened, but hate to find 
ourselves deceived. The attractive ever perishes 
with the supernatural. But to those who read and 
inquire for themselves, there is nothing whatever in 
the decision of the French Academy of Science 
which can be considered bus destructive of mesmer- 
ism. What is it that the Academy decided? Few 

know, — few care to inquire. A general impression 
has gone abroad, thai mesmerism received, in 1784, 
its coup '/' graa ; and there men are content to let 
the matter rest ; \^r are they not thus Baved the 
trouble of thinking i I low pleasant to believe in the 
eternal banishment of a subject, concerning which, 
the idle, the self-interested, and the prejudiced have 
• their several motives for saying, els some honest 
churchman did of the Aihanasian ( freed, " I wish we 

wen- well rid of it." The blessed consummation is 

not, however, so i asj of attainment ; for what is the 
truth? The French Academj merely decided that 
there was not sufficient o to -how that the 

phenomena called magnetic are caused by the action 
of a fluid. A.8 to the phenomena themselves the 

idemy not only allow- I >ut, as it appears to 

me. concede - i ; .< real question in debate, in terms 
the most explicit. These are the very words in which 
the examiners sum up their report "Ce que nous 
avous appris, oii, du mom-, ce qui nous a etc con- 



12 MESMERISM. 

firme d'une maniere demonstrative efevidente par 
Pexamen des procedes du magnetisme, c'est que 
Vhomme pent agir sur Vhomme a tout moment, et 
presque a volonte, en frappant son imagination ; c'est 
que les gestes, et les signes les plus simples peuvent 
avoir les plus puissans effets ; c'est que Taction de 
1'homme sur l'imagination peut-etre reduite en art, et 
conduite par une methode, sur des sujets qui out la 
foi." ' 

Translating the above as literally as possible, we 
find that the Commissioners have thus expressed 
themselves : — 

" That which we have learnt, or, at least, that 
which has been proved to us, in a clear and satisfac- 
tory manner, by our inquiry into the phenomena of 
mesmerism, is — that man can an upon man, at all 
times and almost at will, by striking his imagination : 
— that signs and gestures the most simple may pro- 
duce the most powerful effects: that the action of 
man upon the imagination may be reduced loan art, 
and conducted after a certain method, when exer- 
cised upon patients who have faith in the proceed- 
ings." 

The above passage will show that the French 
Academy decidedly agrees with the first promo 
of mesmerism as to the existence of certain remark- 
able phenomena : it is only respecting the cause that 
the two are at issue ; the one asserting that it i- a 
fluid — the other that it is imagination. Whether 



1 Expose des Experiences qui ont etc faitos pour l'Exameo du 
Magnetisme Animate. Pans. 17^4. 



MESMERISM. 13 

the latter may not herein be as guilty of a nonsequi- 
tur as the former, we may hereafter consider. At 
present I merely remark that, granting the magnetic 
phenomena to spring from the imagination, we do 
not thereby condemn them to contempt, or oblivion; 
far less do ire (as Borne persona seem to suppose) 
abrogate them altogether* 

Were mesmerism only viewed as illustrative of 
the mind's influence upon the organization, it would 
hold out high claims to notice. What subject, we 
may ask, is more fertile of important reflections? 
Materialists, curiously enough, adduce it to disprove 
mesmerism, which makes against their news of man 
■s a mere machine — of thought as a mere elabora- 
tion ot* the brain; — but, in so doing, they open a 
field of speculation^ which the] would be sorry to 
enter upon further than they find convenient In 
the \< rj terms of their dissent, they admit of two 
thin- - of a wholly different nature — that is, the 
imagination and the organization; — the first not 
only modifying the action of the latter, but actually 
mastering it altogether. Granting that the imagina- 
tion can influence the bodily frame to the extent al- 
lowed by the French Academy in its report on mes- 
merism; if what thej saj In- true: — "Nous avons 
mi ['imagination exalted devenue assez puissante pour 
faire perdre en un instant la parole." — u We have 
i the imagination, when exalted,, become powerful 
enough to make a person lose the faculty of speech 
in a moment : " — if we believe this, then indeed we 

admit of a motive force, to which we can hardly Bet 

bounds, and which makes mesmerism, with all its 

2 



14 MESMERISM, 

pretensions, a feeble and unnecessary agent. The 
supposition of an existing fluid can add nothing to 
miracles like these. By demonstrating the omnipo- 
tence of mind over organization, the opponents of 
mesmerism prove too much. They bring us to a 
point where it is only one analogical step further to 
inquire, whether the force, which can so act on the 
organization to which it is attached, may not, perad- 
venture, extend its influence to a sphere external to 
itself? For peremptorily answering this question in 
the negative, we can assign no reason, but that ex- 
ternal offices for such an agent come not within the 
pale of our experience; — and reasoning like this 
we cannot but reject as an effectual bar to all inquiry 
whatever. We must remember that human experi- 
ence is ever on the increase, and that there exists not 
one power, even the most palpable, of which we can 
affirm that we have ascertained all the functions. 
There is not a discovery of modern times, but teaches 
us that the force which performs some things where- 
of we are cognizant, may also perforin others of 
which we have, as yet, no notion whatever. Let 
my reader bear in mind, that I by no means affirm 
that the imagination is the agent in mesmerism, in- 
ternally or externally. All I mean to assert is. that 
the careful French Academy, and their subsequent 
followers, have gone further than the magneti* 
themselves, in attributing power to mind, and in re- 
lating wonders to prove that power. Say what we 
will, the important point in mesmerism. — the influ- 
ence of man upon his fellow. — was conceded by 
the French Academy in no doubtful terms : — through 









MESMERISM. 15 

the imagination, it is true ; yet still it is conceded. 
The imagination is but considered as the means ; 
man is still the agent. Are the phenomena them- 
selves altered by being referred to the imagination, 
instead of a magnetic fluid? Not in the least. Do 
we comprehend them better. when so referred? By 
no means. We onlv seem so to do, because in the 
one case they are referred to a cause of which we 
cannot but confess oui ignorance ; while, in the other, 
they are attributed to the action of a power which 

we think (how vainly !) that we comprehend. 

Fourthly. The fourth cause, which has banished 
iip-iih li-in from the rank and position to which it is 

entitled, is the early attempt to assimilate it to the 
certain sciences in an erroneous manner. In our 
researches into the discover] of fcfesmer, we bave, 
from the beginning, struck into a path which never 

could lead 08 tO the desired end; and then, most 

unreasonably, we bave charged upon the subject of 
our inquiry the fault which existed in ourselves. 
Because we bave found nothing, when we did not 
k aright, we have impatiently concluded that 
there was nothing whatever to be found. Perhaps 
the error has originated with the Mesmerists them- 
selves. To secure the suffrage of scientific men for 
their favorite pursuit is evidently desirable. How 

should they accomplish tin-: 'The da\< are long 

since past, in which men were content to reason after 
the vague mode of the Aristotelian philosophy , which 

leant upon conjecture rather than experiment, and 

discussed absurdities as gravel] as the ordinary phe- 
nomena of nature. The world has reached an era, 



16 MESMERISM. 

in which facts, attested by the senses, "independent 
of the human will, and invariably reproduced under 
the same circumstances, can alone engage the atten- 
tion of the learned. With the scientific men of our 
day, (and far be it from me to censure this) certainty 
is the great object. In order, then, to claim the no- 
tice and the fostering protection of science, the friends 
of mesmerism have long endeavored to identify their 
presumed agent with physical forces, already ascer- 
tained and of invariable action. In their principle, 
perhaps, they are right — in its application. wrong 
altogether. Forgetting that mesmerism is a mental 
and vital, not less than physical phenomenon, and 
that mind and life are in perpetual opposition to the 
laws of the material world, they have endeavored to 
recognise in mesmerism an operation as constant as 
that of the galvanic battery, or the electric rial, A 
certain school of German writers, e<pi cially, have 
theorized on our subject after the false method erf 
explaining one class of phenomena in nature by itfl 
fancied resemblance to another. Wishing, perhaps, 
to avoid the error of the Spiritualists, who solve the 
problem in debate by the power of the soul alone, 
they have ransacked the material world tor analog 
to mesmerism, till the mind itself has been endued 
with its affinities and its poles. Such attempts &fl 
these have done the greatest disservice to the cause 
we advocate. They submit it to a wrong test It 
is as if the laws of light should be applied to a (ji, 
tion in acoustics. It is as if we should expect to 
find in a foreign kingdom the laws and customs of 
our own. Thus wrongly biased, we turn away from 



MESMERISM. 17 

mesmerism, as provoked at finding it other than we 
deemed it to be ; as the prince in the fairy tale, who 
found his betrothed, though very charming, not in 
the least like her portrait, and so sent her back in 
disgrace. Who has not experienced a thousand 
times the same feeling! We read, perhaps, a de- 
scription of soim- lovely scene; we thence form an 
image of it in our thoughts. We at length behold 

it. and arc discontented to find it endued, perhaps, 

with even more beauty than we had imagined^ be- 
cause the beauty is of a different kind. There is 
rock where we expected smooth turf: there is wild- 

ne8Sj where we looked fof cult i\ a t ion : there is a 

withered oak, where we had in fancy placed a hu- 
man dwelling. If. in matters of taste, preconcep- 
tions like these prepare the way for disappointment; 

in matter- «>f reason tin \ are n..i leulated to 

awake disgust A icience that is misconceived la- 
bor- under peculiar disadvantages. Thus, then, till 
the initial Btep towards a comprehension of mesmer- 
ism be taken anew, there ba no hope that it will ever 
be understood <>r appreciated. Why unavailingly 
seek to reduce it to a formula of which it is insus- 
ceptible; if we ascribe it to a power already ascer- 
tained, why not treat it, at least, as an entirely new 
function of that power: Why limit it to what we 

know, when possibly it may be destined to extend 

the boundaries of our knowledge} Why are we to 

be trammeled with foregone conclusions i Vet upon 
these vet) restrictions, the opponents of mesmerism 
insist : thus taking away from men the means of in- 

2* 



18 MESMERISM. 

vestigating the agency in question, by Torcing them 
to set about it in the wrong way. 

The case is the more perplexing, inasmuch as this 
apparent unfairness is grounded on instinctive pro- 
pensities of our nature, with which it were vain to 
quarrel, since they are actually a part of man's most 
valuable inheritance and absolutely essential to the 
whole conduct of life. That attraction towards sens- 
uous objects, which is fitted to a being that lives in a 
visible and tangible world, draws us inevitably away 
from whatever shuns the senses to that which may 
be seen and handled; and that constitution of our 
minds, which leads us to rely mi the invariable) i 
of nature's sequences, necessarily brings with it a love 
of the certain and the permanent. With tendencies like 
these, at once to be cherished and guarded against, 
it is difficult to deal. Thus reflecting, I am not sur- 
prised at the hostile reception which mesm< rism has 
met with in almost every quarter — I see that it could 
not have been otherwise. Unfortunately too, those 
men who are the last to he gained over, air generally 
the best worth gaining; while those whose habits of 
mind lead them to embrace the now doctrine without 
hesitation, are mostly visionaries, who find themselves 
more at home in the affairs of heaven than of earth, 
and are ever more disposed to speculate wildly than 
to submit to the rules of strict and severe analysis. 

But, on the other hand, let it not be forgotten that 
it is the province of man to mount from the known 
to the unknown, and to reason from that w hich can 
be seen to that which is invisible. If one strong 
instinct teaches us to repose in the objects which lie 






MESMERISM. 19 

open to our immediate apprehension, another not less 
powerful calls us imperatively to rise to the detection 
of secret causes. And true wisdom consists in the 
just balance of these two contending propensities. 
Nor are we invited to ascend beyond the level of 
more obvious things by the constitution of our minds 
alone. Between the quenchless desire of our bosoms, 

and the dispositions of the external world, there is a 

harmony as perfect a- it i- beautiful. The simplest 
of nature's sequences, should we trace it further up 
the scale, conducts as inevitably t<> somewhat beyond 

our visual ken. while at the same time we are encou- 
raged t<> proceed] by our success in analyzing the in- 
visible and ascertaining the obscure. For instance, 
by imperceptible exhalation and absorption, there is 
carried on throughout the world a perpetual loss and 
gain, conversion of substance, and exchange of pow- 
er, which i- scarcel] conceivable, yel which man, in 
many instances, has reduced t<> rule and expressed 
in number. We have measured the undulations of 

light, and the Waves of SOUnd. The microscope has 

slmwn ns worlds, <>f which our unassisted senses have 
no cognizance ; and science, aided by the telescope, 
ha- traced from stars, unseen by the naked eye, the 
one great law of attraction prevailing to the very 
verge of ascertained creation. Ought we. then, in 
any case, to torn away from facts that indicate a 
hidden influence, merelj because that influence has 
net yet been tested by the » uses? Even our con- 
duct in earthly matters will reprove us here, or the 
machinery, wrought by human hand-, the results 
alone are present d to vulgar view, while it is left to 



20 MESMERISM. 

the thoughtful and the wise, to explore the finer 
springs and hidden motory powers. How much 
more, then, in viewing the mechanism of the uni- 
verse, should we believe that we discern, as it were, 
only the hands and the dial-plate, while, behind 
these, " wheel within wheel involved " is hidden from 
our gaze, in order to tempt our inquiry, and to deve- 
lope the higher part of our nature by the stimulus of 
curiosity ? 

There is, then, in the nature of things no necessity 
that mesmerism, because it is recondite, should be 
unexplored. To investigate it may indeed be diffi- 
culty but appears to be rather enjoined than forbid- 
den — enjoined by the tendencies of mind, not 1 
than by the constitution of matter. It may. how- 
ever, still be urged in reply, that the variableness, 
which must be granted, in some respects, to charac- 
terize mesmerism, is the true disqualification which 
debars it from the realms of science. How. may it 
be argued, can that which is confessedly irregular be 
shaped into a system : how can phenomena, which 
contradict each other at every turn, admit of classifi- 
cation ? 

I answer that such an objection, if carried out into 
a principle, would effectually arrest the progress of 
all human knowledge. It would make us rest satis- 
fied with the apparent and the superficial, when we 
should be striving after the real and the profound. 
It would make our own imperfect observation the 
measure of Nature's regularity. Are we entitled to 
conclude, in any case. that, because we have not 
hitherto been able to assign a law to certain opera- 



MESMERISM. 21 

tions, they are therefore absolutely without law ? 
Are we to assert that the orderly dispositions of the 
universe are deformed by a monstrous exception, or 
is it not wiser to believe that our own knowledge is 
in fault, whenever Nature appears inconsistent with 
herself! Surely we have enough order around us 

to SUggeftl that all. which to us seems chance, is 
"direction which we cannot Bee?" that all apparent 
anomalies arc but like those discords which, in the 

most masterly music, prepare the transitions from 
one noble passage to another, and are actually essen- 
tial to the general harmony. In many instances, this 
is not mere conjecture. Il<>w much <>f fancied im- 
pel frctum and disorder has Red before our investiga- 
tion '. The motions of comets at first appear to offer 
an exception to the exact arrangements of the uni- 
verse. The] traverse all parts of the heavens. 
Their path- have every possible inclination to the 
plane of the ecliptic; and, unlike the planets, the 
motion of more than half of those, which have ap- 
peared, has been retrograde; — that is, from East to 
West. 1 JTel have we been able to detect the ele- 
ments of regularity in the midst of all this seeming 
confusion, and to predict with certainty the day, the 
hour, and the minute, of a comet's return to our re- 
gion of the sky. 

Experience also shows that apparently insulated 

and lawless phenomena may not only be reduced to 

a law. hut to a well-known law; — that many a fa- 
miliar agent puts on strange disguises : and that 

1 Mrs. Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences. Page 



22 MESMERISM. 

events, with which, in their mazy channels, we seem 
to be unacquainted, may be perfectly recognised by 
us at their source. Thus galvanism and the mag- 
netic force are proved by recent discoveries to be 
only forms of electricity ; showing that a fact may 
be altered — not in itself, but in the circumstances 
that surround it, and that complexity of develop- 
ment is perfectly consistent with unity of design. 
Instances like these, while they encourage us to in- 
quiry, should teach us to believe that all which is 
needed to vindicate the regularity of nature is a more 
extended observation on our parts. 

Far, then, from granting that mesmerism is de- 
barred from the province of strict analysis by an ap- 
parent irregularity, I cannot admit that there exist! 
in it one disqualification, that has not equally been 
shared, at one time or other, by every science. All 
that I concede, is that it is in a different stage of its 
existence, compared with subjects of ascertained 
knowledge. It must not be likened to optics, CM 
hydrostatics, in their actual development, but to 
those sciences in their dim and early condition ; 
when rude guesses were accepted as substitutes fot 
truth, and when objects were discerned as mistily as 
the landscape is — 

11 What time the shepherd, Mowing- of his nails. 
Can neither call it perfect day nor night." 

There is indeed this difference — the ad\auces 
that we have made in knowledge, generally, render 

it more easy for us to study any subject in particular. 
Still mesmerism (represented indeed by some as in 






MESMERISM. 23 

its dotage) is but in its infancy, and it is a folly to 
call upon it to exhibit the features of a riper age. 

Moreover the uncertainties of mesmerism have 
been much exaggerated. I may ask. can that be so 
irregular an influence, which the French Academy, 
in the heigh! of its learned displeasure, acknowledged 
was capable of being conducted by art and method? 

My own experiments, also, will hereafter show that 
it exhibits a definite u form and pressure," and justify 
the conjecture that it may have its own laws of cer- 
tainty, though not precisely those to which we would 
refer it. 

On the whole it appears, there IS DO reason to con- 
clude that mesmerism, because once wrongly pre- 
sented to science, should never be presented to 
science ;it all ; — that because its agent has not been 
analyzed, it is therefore unfit tor analysis; or that 
because often erroneously identified with known 
forces it should at no time be found to be connected 

with them j but — 

Fifthly. Our impatience of whatever we cannot 
account for, has prevented, and will. I fear. Ion- pre- 
vent mesmerism from being rightly examined, or 

even from being classed generally amongst realities. 

This cause, at the basis of all the others, which 
have, at any time, operated most powerfully against 
mesmerism, deserves <>nr particular attention. 

This it i-. which induced the friends of mesmerism 

to bestow on it a name, and refer it to agents, which, 

by seeming to indicate its origin, should render it 
easier of belief. 

This it is, which led the members of the French 



24 MESMERISM. 

Academy of Sciences — not being ablfc to get rid of 
it altogether — to banish it to the airy realms of the 
imagination. And this it is, which, at the present 
day, can alone explain the standing miracle — as 
great as that of mesmerism itself — namely, that 
facts, which have been witnessed by thousands, 
should be rejected as if no testimony to their truth 
had ever been offered. 

If in inquiring into the deep grounds of this sin- 
gularity, I should trespass op my reader's patience, 
let the following consideration plead my excuse. 
Every secret cause of the judgments we form, in 
which the constitution of our own minds is con- 
cerned, requires to be thoroughly probed and exhib- 
ited in its soundness or unsoundness ; lor how shall 
we attain to certain truth, unless sure of the princi- 
ples on which we seek it ? A- he. who would take 
an observation of the sun must first ascertain that his 
instrument is correct, so must we. before examining 
nature, duly regulate the organ of our perception. 

Whence, then. ari>e> it, that with the world in 

general, " 1 comprehend not." is equivalent to " I do 

not believe ? " 

Many of our most important and habitual modes 
of thinking would seem to revolt against this error. 
Granting that whatever is beyond the pale of our 
knowledge is a delusion, we. by parity of reasoning, 
must deny the existence of ourselves, and. conse- 
quently, of all external things: for the soul i< an 
unsolved problem, and man is the great anomaly of 
creation. Yet thus do we not argue? On the con- 
trary, we not only acknowledge that we are. but o 






KESMEltiSM. 25 

not to inquire what we are. ever studying the volume 
of our intellectual being, in order to discover some 
law. which should be to mind what attraction is to 
matter, Consenting thus to take our minds as we 

find them, and to observe and to ascertain rather 
than to decide and to excommunicate, why is it that, 

on bo many other occasions, we pursue a directly 
itrary course \ For this reason. With regard to 
ourselves, our own consciousness compels us to begin 
by recognising the reality of certain phenomena; 
but, with regard to other things, we are at liberty to 

speculate before we ( \aniine. 1/nIess restrained by 

some -non- controlling force, our natural tendency 
is i \< i to rush onwttrd i<> causi - and conclusions — 
t<> simplify and to g< w ralize— and hence to dismiss 
from our consideration what \« r does not harmonize 
with our own systems. This propensitj to resolve 

the complex and the partial into the simple and ulti- 
mate appears t«. be a pan «,t' our original constitu- 
tion, and is one <»t" those strong impulses which seem 

made to ram us too tar. lesl they should tail of car- 
rying a- tar enough. By if we trace that unity 
amidst variety, winch stamps creation a- the work of 
one hand: hut by it also we are led to invert the 
true proa - of n asoning, and i<» -natch at the higher 
antecedents of nature's sequences, before we have 
brought the lower within our grasp. Those compre- 
hensive principles whi< h .are. m truth, the latest fruit 

ot ezperi< nee, We Would force to our impatience, mid 

mature at our pleasure. All knowledge being iden- 
tified with a progT --ion toward- priman causes, and 

primar] s being ot' necessity the simplest, we 



26 MESMERISM. 

fall into the mistake of striving after simplicity that 
we may reach wisdom — whereas it is only through 
wisdom that a safe simplicity can be reached. In- 
stead of accommodating ourselves to nature, we 
would compel nature to accommodate herself to us. 
Instead of ascending cautiously from the individual 
to the general, we take our general rule and force 
the individual circumstance to bend to it. Instead 
of adapting our theory to our facts, like a gracefully 
fitting garment, we clip and torture our facta to make 
them suit the construction of our theory, or, should 
they prove especially rebellious, banish them alto- 
gether. This is fatal to the very clearness we aim 
at. To simplify rashly is but to confuse. Until we 
consent to view things as they are, rather than as we 
would make them to be, we shall advance only to be 
led astray. Until we learn to consent for a while to 
philosophic doubt, we shall never arrive at certainty. 
For, in truth, we are debarred from that comprehen- 
siveness of principle, which is so attractive to our 
pride by the deficiencies of our own understanding. 1 
Our laws must necessarily be multiplied because ouf 
faculties are bounded. Nature, indeed, may be one ; 
but the aspect she presents to us is varied, and We 

1 "I thought that the first step towards satisfying several inquir- 
ies, the mind of man was very apt to run into, was to take a survey 
of our own understandings, examine our own powers, ami see to 
what things they were adapted. Till tli at was done. I suspt-cted 
we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for satisfaction in a 
quiet and sure possession of truths, that most concerned us, v 
we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of being, as if all 
that boundless extent were the natural and undoubted p 
of our understandings.'' — Locke's Essay on the Unman I 
standing." 



MESMERISM. 27 

cannot climb high enough to behold her mighty land- 
scape subject to our gaze. Our ardent inclination to 
generalize thus straggling with our defect of power, 
how difficult ifi the task of impartially examining a 
new and extraordinary Agent ! Impatient of our ig- 
norance, and making DO estimate of our own minds, 
we attempt to soar into the full light of truth, with- 
out considering whether omr pinions may not be made 

of such materials efi to melt beneath its beams. 

From these consideratioiis it appears that the only 
course of investigation which is fitted to our faculties 
is to observe with patience, and not to be frightened 
from oar propriety because a phenomenon appears 
strange to us, either in itself or its concomitants. In 
a world, where it must be allowed that all is wonder- 
fill, <»r that nothing i- wonderful, there i- no intrinsic 
reason why <>nr sequence of events should be more 
astonishing than another. Neither Bhoukl we be 
afraid of multiplying laws (which are, in truth, no- 
thing m<»rc than " the expression of the most general 
circumstances, in which the phenomena to which 
they refer have been felt by us t<> agree 9 '), as if. l>y 
id doing, we offended against some unknown and 
mysterious power. In proposing a new law, we only 
adopt a convenient, and it may be, temporary expe- 
dient; we only mean to acknowledge that we have 
not sufficiently obs e r ved ;> new bet as yet to perceive 
ii- relationship with others, wherewith we are already 
acquainted. And. indeed, if offence there he. it is not 
of our creating. It i< the agreement or disagreement 
of natural phenomena by which the number of our laws 
IS diminished or extended. Above all. we must not for- 



28 MESMERISM. 

get that it is not we who are to give laws to the fact, 
but the fact to us. We have simply to trace its im- 
mediate and remoter antecedents, keeping in mind 
that a fact is a virtual unity, and that the nobler pro- 
vince of analysis lies not in ingenuity of dissection but 
in mounting, step by step, the scale of apparently di- 
vergent causes until we re-unite them in one common 
centre ; — not in distinguishing the parent stem from 
the branches and the leaves, which together make up 
one tree, but in tracing back the tree itself to that 
which is the general origin of all plants — a seed. 
Thus Gall, as I have heard, developed the brain, 
instead of cutting it in pieces, and demonstrated that 
its convolutions were but parts of one beautiful and 
consistent whole. 

But even should we utterly fail in this. — should a 
phenomenon stand single and alone, and baffle all 
our attempts to assimilate it to aught around us, we 
cannot, in true philosophy, pronounce that it exists 
not. The circumstance that water expands when 
cooled down below a certain temperature, is utterly 
at variance with the usual law by which all substani 
contract under a diminution of heat. \ el we do n<»t 
deny that the fact is so. Surely, when we consider 
that every event is but one term of a series, the be- 
ginning and the end of which are alike lost in infinity, 
we should expect to trace back many a phenomenon 
into an obscurity that should seem impenetrable. 
Surely, when we reflect oh the vastness of the visible 
creation, and on the still vaster universe of thought : 
when it seems probable that our system is but one ^\ 
countless numbers, that are revolving round some 



; 



MESMERISM. 29 

unknown centre, in periods which thought cannot 
measure nor science determine ; that these, again, 
are peopled with various orders of intelligence, — we 
should rather wonder that we know so much, than 
that some facts should transcend our knowledge, and 
acquieefee ill <>nr ignorance rather than deny existence 
to that which we cannot comprehend. 

But I may be reminded that mesmerism may be 

one of those subject* which surpass our intellects 
vision : and that, if so, to examine it is superfluous, 
and to search for its principle a pure waste of time. 
Undoubtedly. But are we now. or can we be, in- 
deed, at any tinir. entitled to da£S mesmerism amongst 
Unfathomable things : It " the proper study of man- 
kind is man." this, as regarding man especially, pre- 
sent- to In- faculties a fair field of investigation ; and 
with respect to such legitimate subjects of inquiry, 
the point at which we should abandon enterprise has 
not yet been ascertained. While, then, we admit 
the difficulties that beset us on every side, let us ad- 
vance, and fear not. and take caution with us in our 
pursuit erf truth : not to check hut to steady US in 

our course. Discovery may be nearer to us than we 
suppose. 1 The enigma in which every point seems 
to contradict the other, may be rendered clear, per- 
haps, bj one word alone ; and ma\ set us wondering 



1 This, above all. is not the time f«»r despair, when such a man 
u Ell I >1 Ins powers of learning and of observation 

to tli . Ueating tin- - far as ! fan 

jndge from th< count of Dr. E riments which 

ha- reached me abroad) in a spirit which seems to render any re- 
marks of mine useless. 
3» 



30 MESMERISM. 

that we did not sooner perceive its sirrlple solution. 
To me, at least, nature has just read a beautiful les- 
son, inculcating doubt in ourselves, trust in her, and 
patience to wait upon her revelations. All day the 
mountains were covered with a mist so uniform that, 
to a stranger's eye, they might have seemed like 
clouds, or altogether have escaped his notice ; — but 
at this moment there is light and clearness : and 
where almost a blank was, are now the glorious Alps, 
snow-covered, lit up with sunshine — seeming to link 
earth with heaven. 

Having now detailed, a1 too much length, perhaps, 
the principal causes thai have rendered mesmerism 
obnoxious to the world, it now only remains for me 
to touch briefly on one or two minor causes of offence. 
Mesmerism is one of nature's great resources in the 
cure of maladies; and it is not, therefore, wonderful, 
if some of its most striking effects should have been 
developed rather in the ailing and the delicate than 
in the health) and robust. Heine the world, always 
readv to build up error on truth, has connected it, in 
idea, with weakness of mind as well as of body, and 
has classed it amongst those idle imaginings which 
beset the fanciful invalid. But what is the fact? 
Mesmerism does, indeed, act more peculiarly on the 
nervous system; and. on that account, affects, in an 
especial manner, persons whose nervous system is 
finely organized. But we must not confound sensi- 
tiveness with imbecility. The universal temperament 
of genius gives the lie to such an error ; and it would 
be plainly ridiculous to say that the timid and sus- 
ceptible author of an elegy in a country churchyard, 



MESMERISM. 31 

or Rousseau, or Pascal, 1 who were both nervous even 
to hypochondriaeism, wete weak in intellect, because 
they were strong in sensibility. Besides, before we 
identify mesmerism with weakness of any kind, it 
should be shown that none but the feeble are suscep- 
tible of its influence. Now, as far as my experience 
s, 1 can affirm, that not only doesa certain degree 
of intelligence appear requisite for the favorable man- 
ifestation of the mesmeric phenomena, but that per- 
sona in perfect health have frequently exhibited them. 
It maj also be asserted, that fear and nervous agita- 
tion are wholly iuc uipatible with their genuine 

development These may. indeed] accompany a 
spurious sort of mesmeric affection, but are wholly 
distincl from the power with which the] <<> ixist, and 
to which the] are invariably hurtful. The] arc the 
corruptions of die true faith, Bind not the faith itself. 
In fine, sensibility, and ma weakness, is the real con- 
dition on winch mesmerism depends. 

But u i- not only an apparent identity with weak- 
m ss which has degraded tin- unfortunate subject ; — 
it has suffered -till more from a repulsive connection 
with disease. The discovt rer of mesmerism was a 
physician, and its extraordinary curative powers have 
naturally placed n m medical hands; BO that of the 
existing work- upon it there are few- that are not 
written bj members of the medical profession, and 
fewer still that do not bear immediate reference to 
the treatment of maladies. This alone is sufficient 

after having on< • t into a river was, 

for a l<>n L r t : i 1 1 • - . toruiented frith the idea of being continually on the 

edge of a prcc; 



32 MESMERISM. 

■s 

to exclude it from general interest, and to lower its 
pretensions to literary consideration. Medical books 
are read but by a few, — ordinarily, indeed, by those 
alone whose vocation compels them to the perusal. 
To the greater part of mankind they are as closely 
shut as the dissecting room. It might, however, be 
supposed that, as all men are liable to pain and sick- 
ness, all would be interested in that which, at one 
time, claimed to be a panacea. But whatever may 
be said of the sufferings of humanity, the masfl of 
health is greater than the mass of disease ; and most 
persons instinctively dislike to have their well-being 
disturbed by hearing of remedies which they do not 
require, or of ailments with w Inch they cannot sym- 
pathize. There is something also in medical details, 
which is peculiarly quenching to the imagination, and 
consequently distasteful to the man of letter- and re- 
finement. It is not, then, extraordinary that mesmer- 
ism, treated medically, should have been restricted 
to a narrow sphere : but is this the fault of mesmer- 
ism itself? Surely not. On no subject i- it 
permitted to 

" Give up to party what's meant for mankind." 

The doors of this temple should he thrown widely 
open to the world. As mental, it regards the meta- 
physician and the moralist : as physical, the physiolo- 
gist and the man of science : and 1 would call upon 
each and all, separating it from its ridiculous con- 
comitants, to contribute to raise it to that intellectual 
grandeur of which it is so eminently susceptible. 
Such are the causes which have condemned mes- 



MESMERISM. 33 

merism to lie beating, like a wreck, on the shore of 
substantial knowledge. The vessel, in itself, was 
beautiful and well built, but adverse currents turned 

it from its course, and by many a storm its sails were 
rent, and its noble frame was shattered. 

But it is not so much the causes which I have 
separately enumerated a- their combination which 
ha- marked the discovery oi' Monier with peculiar 
odium, and rendered it a by word and a reproach. 

All the circumstances which are unfavorable to mes- 
merism end in one fatal word — contempt. Every 
thing tends to raise a laugh at its expense ; — and 

iflSf a laugh who -hall ha\e the COUTage to con- 
tend : Tin- l- the last possible degradation. Men 
love the mysterious and the proscribed, but shrink 
from the ridiculous; they can bear to he thought 
wicked, but not to he deemed fools ; they will en- 
dure t«» he hated. Ian not t<> l»c despised. A<>w mes- 
merism ha- become not merelj a persecuted but a 
ridiculous faith. There i- no pomp of circumstance 
about it to uphold the proselyte who is called upon 

to defend it to the (hath. The -Ion of martyrdom 

for in sake is done away. There is no dignity in 
suffering in such a cause. 

Thus, then, the advocate of mesmerism comes be- 
fore a prejudiced tribunal, and labors under disabili- 
ties which it were just to hear in mind w hen we feel 

inclined to measure the merits of his subject by the 
reception with which it meets. We should, however, 

take hm a partial view of the case, were we lo attri- 
bute the writer's want of success entirely to the par- 
tialities of those whom he addresses. Before we can 



34 MESMERISM. 

have a true notion of the difficulties of his undertak- 
ing, the causes of failure personal to himself, must 
also be added to the account. He has to battle not 
only with the minds of others but with his own — to 
fight his way through obstacles which arise from with- 
in as well as from without, and to force himself to 
calmness where all conspires to agitate and to excite. 
However difficult it may be for him to obtain a hear- 
ing ; to treat his subject impartially and so as best 
to conciliate an adversary is perhaps a still harder task. 
He is his own worst enemy, and, amidst every ambush 
laid for him, has most to beware of the snares of his 
own spirit. For what is a man's state of mind, when, 
for the first time, he withdraws the curtain which sep- 
arates the region of mesmerism from the scenery of 
common life? He is bewildered wit 1 1 rushing thoughts 
and wondrous speculations. He has beheld, but seal 
ly knows what it is he lias beheld. A world of magic 
has opened on his gaze; and. should he be a person 
of imagination, who. like Schiller's idealist, i< tired of 
rough reality, he finds there all that can intoxicate 
and enchain, anil keep him lingering <>n enchanted 
ground when he should be struggling onward t<> the 
domain of truth. Thus fascinated, thus enthralled, 
it is no wonder that, if called upon to abdicate his 
paradise, he should exclaim, like Milton's Eve when 
sentenced to quit Eden — 

u From thee 
How shall I part, and whither wander down 
Into a lower world, to this obscure 
And wild ? How shall we breathe in other air 
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits : '* 






MESMERISM. 35 

There is, moreover, in the sensations of him who 
finds that he is capable of exercising the mesmeric 
influence that peculiar charm which ever waits upon 
the development of a new faculty. Even the swim- 
mer, who learns at length to surmount the boisterous 
surf, or to stem the adverse stream, will revel in the 
conscioiisne-s of awakened power. How much more 
must the mental enthusiast riot in the display of ener- 
gies so long concealed, so wondronsly developed! 
Self-love adds her flattering lure to the attractions of 
novelty: — the pride of exerting an influence over 
others awakens in his breast. It is he himself who 
is the author of his own enjoyment ; and the fairy 

scenes appeal to him fairer still, because they are of 

his own creating. Unexpectedness, too. that prin- 
cipal ingraft nt of pleasure, vet more entrances and 

bewilders the astonished novice, who perceives such 
mighty effects resulting from In- employment of a few 

and simple means. He feels that he i> •■ greater than 

Ik 1 knows/* and he advances into the yet uncon- 
quered province that lies before him. with all those 
alternations of rapture and surprise which agitate \< ( 

please the explorer of strange regions. He trembles 
— he hesitates — he catches ;i glimpse of a new pros- 
pect Still is he tempted onward — ever onward 
fresh wonders still opening around him. and fresh 

complacency awakening in his heart : tor mesmerism 
is not one of those pursuits of which a man soon 
tire<. Pounded OH human nature, it presents B per- 
petual variety, like that of humanity itself. Its -ur- 

cessful votary runs the risk, therefore, of turning his 
thoughts upon it not only too vividly, hut too exclu- 



36 MESMERISM. 

sively. Absorbed by a mighty interest^ he is too apt 
to pass into that mood wherein, as to a lover, all 
nature is to us but a reflection of the beloved object ; 
when, if we turn a page, we think that it bears 
reference to the subject of our ceaseless contempla- 
tion ; — ' when every sound teems with appropriate 
oracles, and every sight with omens addressed to us 
alone — all figuring the image of our own thoughts. 
Of this there is the greater danger, because there 
exists, in fact, so much of unconscious mesmerism in 
life, that it is not surprising if, like Alonzo in The 
Tempest, we should exclaim — 

" Methought the billows spoke and told me of it; 
The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder — 
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe — pronounced 
Its name." 

But, to an enthusiast in particular, how much there 
is about him and within him to recall and strengthen 
the first impression, and to speak to him perpetually 
of that which has kindled his imagination ! That 
mysterious bliss, wherewith the very atmosphere (^ 
those we love seems to be impregnated ; — that at- 
traction of an unknown face, which beams upon us 
from the passing crowd, and which we would give 
worlds to see again ; — the sleep of the infant that 
is " rocked by the beating of its mother's h< art ; " — 
all teems with an influence, potent yet invisible, and 
which we may call mesmerism, if we will. But, alas ! 
feelings are not proofs : and. on these occasions, how 
much we feel that wo can by no means prove — how 
much we seem to understand of which we can ren- 
der no account ! It will be easily seen how unfavor- 



MESMERISM. 37 

able is this vagueness of emotion — this universality 
of reference — to the strictness of philosophy and the 
particularity of rigid research. We have at hand 
too ready a solution of every difficulty. We are 
tempted to generalize before we have performed the 
work of analysis, and to allow hypothesis to supersede 
investigation. On a subject BO wide and so fertile, 
analogies offer themselves in crowds, and being easier 

than inductions, are more readily accepted by our 

effervescing imagination. Bo much of nature's inner 
processes 18 apparently laid open to our view, that 
we seem to be on the point of snatching the last 

word of her secret, and of breaking down the bar- 
riers that separate the visible from the unseen, the 
finite from the unbounded* 

Thus excited, how shall ire subside into the calm- 
ness, wherein alone the mind can compare, can 
select] or reject j How shall we exchange the wand 
of the magician for the disenchanting rod of truth? 
How. tVoni the very heights of contemplation, shall 
we stoop to the observation of petty tacts — to the 
detection of fallacies — to the routine of ordinary 

examination : Deeming that we know all things by 

intuition, how can we condescend to reason ? Rather 
arc \\< tempted to frame some vast and all-embracing 

theory — to rush at evnv subject, and consequently 
to fail in all. It l- at least worths of remark, that the 

writers on mesmerism, who have treated it otherwise 

than medically, have been too iniieh of that, school, 

which philosophizes "de omnibus rebus, ei quibus- 
dam aliis." They bave passed the flaming hounds 
of the universe, when the) ought to have been con- 
4 



38 MESMERISM. 

sidering the peculiar influence which one human 
being, under certain circumstances, exerts upon 
another. 

Mesmerism, then, is no matter of indifference, on 
which a man may argue with a clear head because 
he argues with a quiet heart. It is a subject which 
not only calls into action, but has a decided influence 
on all the most essential principles of the human 
mind; disturbing the emotions, and through them 
the exercise of the intellectual powers. Self-love, 
wonder, and desire of novelty, we have already seen 
enlisted in its service, and troubled by its apparent 
miracles. But deeply as it maj engage these feet 
ings, still greater is the effect ivhich it produces upon 
the principle of belief — a part of our mental con- 
stitution which so largely concerns our modes oi ac- 
tion — our present, and our future well-being, that 
whatever tends to modify it is of vital consequence, 
and should be treated with all the caution which the 
importance of the occasion demands. With how 
much watchfulness, then, should we approach a sub- 
ject which is calculated to work an entire revolution 
in the very regulator of our being — to substitute a 
rash credulity for a sound and safe belief: This ifl 
the great snare of his own mind, against which a 
writer on mesmerism has perpetually to be on his 
guard. He has beheld phenomena which are beyond 
the pale of his former experience ; and. impelled as 
we all are to reason from that which we oursel 1 
1 ave seen to that of which we are personal!) ignorant, 
he is tempted to ask himself. — " If this he true, (as I 
perceive it is), why not a thousand other things, oi 



MESMERISM. 39 

which I have hitherto doubted ? Thus is he led to 
trust rather to analogy than to observation; and his 
willingness to accept a fact upon due evidence is 
turned into a disposition to credit all things upon no 
evidence whatever. The barrier of prudent hesita- 
tion is cast down, and his mind is left a prey to the 
invasion of every idle fancy. Thai he was once even 
of a skeptical spirit will profit him nothing. Rather, 
with that propensity U) rush into extremes which is 
a part of human imperfection, the more incredulous 

he has hitherto been, the greater will be his rebound 

to credulity. The more he has hitherto refused to 

put faith in the testimony of others, the more entirely 
will he submit himself to that of In- <»w n senses ; and 
finding that h< i- forced to believe what once he 
deemed incredible, he feels that he has scarcely a 
right to refuse assent to the wildest dreams of a dis- 
eased imagination. The wiae admonition, — " l>e- 
lieve not ever] spirit," — 1- disregarded ; nay, there 
is danger that he should become in love with marvels, 
and not onK welcome them, \\ hen they are offered to 
his consideration, hut go out of his way to seek them, 
even where they exist not ; elevating every trifle into 
Importance, till he falls into the absurdity of perpet- 
ual wonder. Thus it is to be feared that he who 
adventures his baric of discovery into the great deep 
of mesmerism will not. Columbus-like, steer ever to- 
wards one anticipated point, deterred neither by por- 
tents nor by passions in mutiny : but that he will en- 
ter upon a course resembling rather the fabled voyage 
of Ulysses, haunted by prodigies and embarrassed by 
delays ; and it will be well if imagination, like an- 



40 MESMERISM. 

other Circe, does not seduce from their allegiance, 
and transform those faculties which ought to guide 
and serve him under the stern control of reason. 

But, even supposing that a man has strength of 
mind sufficient to elude these perils, and to discipline 
his fancy to the proper standard of belief, stating only 
that which he has ascertained by the most rigid ob- 
servation, there is still a difficulty in his way, which 
relates mutually to himself and to those whom he ad- 
dresses. However reasonable he may be and how- 
ever unprejudiced his reader, still each party is, as 
regards the subject in question, in a very different 
state of experience. It is true that, in a degree, this 
remark applies to every case where information is 
given and received : but then, in ;ill other cases, there 
is a groundwork to go upon, common both to the 
instructor and the instructed. The experience of 
the former is indeed more enlarged than that of the 
latter: yet it is ever to the experience of the pupil 
that the teacher appeals ; and the basis of the m\v 
edifice of knowledge which he undertakes t«> erect 
consists in a tew simple principles * hich arc generally 
recognised by all mankind. For instance, an igno- 
rant man, when told of the enonnous distances at 
which the stars are placed, relatively to the earth and 
to each other, may at first feel inclined to doubt the 
facts : but let the size of the heavenly bodies be -fa- 
ted to him; let hiih be reminded that all objects 
appear less in proportion to their distance from us ; 
and, that which he knows already helping him to 
that he does not know, the matter is at once brought 
within the scope of his comprehension. But. as re- 



MESMERISM. 41 

gard- mesmerism, we are excluded from any such 
appeal to universal experience. On this subject, he 
who undertakes to persuade 4 , and he who consents 
to listen, are not only in different, hut in opposite 
states of mind. There is no common point from 
which they may start together, — there is DO centre 
of belief where they may meet and be reconciled. 

The pupil, at the very outset, is called upon to assent 
to a seri< - of propositions not only startling but repug- 
nant to his experience- Thai a man can throw 
another into a kind of sleep by certain gestures ; that 
the person thus apparently deprived of consciousness 
can answer questions rationally, and discern objects, 
though In- eyes are fast -hut ; — these are the extra- 
ordm.m statements winch alarm him into opposition 
before the discussion is begun, and excite either his 
incredulit] or In- scorn, Bj them he is thrown into 
a perplexing dilemma. Unexplained as are the facts 
of mesmerism, of (what is worse) inefficiently ex- 
plained, n seems ;i- if he bad onlj t<> choose between 
rejecting them as absurdities, or admitting them as 
miracles. In either case, an inquiry into their causes 
seems a pure waste of time It' nullities, they Bprang 
from nothing; if miracles, the] cannot !><• accounted 
lor. Moreover, to admit them as miracles is repug- 
nant t<> human feeling in general* Men love not to 
have their faith taxed more than is absolutely neces* 
s;n\ : and, in tin- case, there is no religious motive 
which can compel faith: on the contrary, many a 
person of weak but seakras piety fears to lessen the 
miracles recorded in scripture, by allowing that any 
thing whatever, which appears to interrupt the course 

4* 



42 MESMERISM. 

of nature, can, at this day, be wrought by mortal 
power. With these feelings, though once, perhaps, 
experienced by himself, the mesmeriser finds it diffi- 
cult duly to sympathize. He has left them far be- 
hind. To him the facts of mesmerism are no mira- 
cles, — for one plain reason : from the moment a 
thing takes its station amongst every day occurrences 
it ceases to be a wonder. Let any unwonted term 
in any sequence of events with which we are already 
acquainted interpose itself sufficiently often, and it 
will itself become a part of the series which it ap- 
peared, at first to interrupt. Jn brief, our familiarity 
with a fact is the measure of our opinion concerning 
it. Drawing lightning from the clouds was once a 
feat that appeared almost necromantic: but custom 
has deprived it of its marvel, and we place conduct- 
ors on our houses as a matter of course. Had the 
sun always begun the day in the west, such would 
appear to us his natural mode of rising. Now the 
mesmeriser has probably been in the constant habit 
of witnessing those phenomena, at the bare mention 
of which others are alarmed or revolted ; and so riv- 
eted together in his thoughts are certain trains of 
physical or mental changes, that not to behold them 
would be the surprise ; not to find the usual result 
consequent upon the usual causes would be the mir- 
acle. 

Thus, then, the writer on mesmerism and \u< 
reader are, as it were, at antagonist poles of belief: 
and it is as difficult for the one to divest himself of 
his present knowledge, and to revert to his ancient 
incredulity or wonder, as for the other cordially to 



MESMERISM. 43 

-ent to facts which belie the whole tenor of his 
experience. To find the resolution of these discords 
is do easy tusk. Let the author approach his subject 
as guardedly as he may. still he cannot but state 
facts that arc astonishing; and the manner of his 
discourse will avail him little while the matter of it 
fas so exceptionable. To those who disbelieve the 
phenomena whereof he treats, an inquiry into their 
causes is but an impertinence. The vcrv calmness 

with which he propounds his heretical opinions, and 
which results from a deep conviction of their truth, 

must appear to others the worst system of incurable 
elrror; — bis impartiality will seem prejudice; his 
utmost caution madness. Let him be ever so 

MMind in mind, he will encounter more than one 

Felii who will be ready to exclaim, "Thou art 
beside thj selfl" 

An opposition so great between the writer on our 
Bubject and his reader, would seem to render the 
task of the former pot only difficult but hopeless. 

On more mature reflection, however, we shall per- 
ceive that though there is much to make him lower 
his expectation- of BUCCeSSj there is enough to 

encourage him not to abandon them altogether 
Amongst those to whom facta interesting and new 
are stated, there will ever be some persons who will 
be led to think and to inquire tor themselves. Thus 
the mesmeriser only loses the suffrages of the pre- 
judiced who refuse, or the careless who are incompe- 
tent, to examine the question, and the vcrv causes 
that contribute to narrow the circle of his auditors 
tend only to render it more select. 



44 MESMERISM. 

In conclusion : — The result of the preceding 
deliberations seems to be this. We should lay aside 
all prejudice, connected either with the origin, name, 
or injudicious exposition of mesmerism, and try the 
subject, wholly and impartially, upon its own merits. 

Unalarmed by the apparent strangeness and in- 
congruity of the phenomena to be investigated, we 
should call to mind how frequently " appearances of 
external nature, puzzling at first sight, and seemingly 
irreconcilable with one another, have all been solved 
and harmonized by a reference to some one pervad- 
ing principle," and should thus be led to surmise that 
the irregularity and variations of the mesmeric world 
may be found, upon mature observation, less inex- 
plicable than a careless spectator could imagine. 
Even should this hope be long deferred, we are not, 
on that account, to deny the reality of well-attested 
facts. Are these things so? is the one great ques- 
tion which we have to ask ; and to separate this from 
all its accidental accompaniments is the first step 
towards its satisfactory solution. 



BOOK II. 



SECTION I. 

MESMERIC SOMNAMB1 LISM, oil. MORE PROPERLY, 
SLEEPWAKING. 1 

In entering upon the examination of a new subject, 
we should strive to place it in the clearest and least 
disputable point of new. T<> this end, I shall far 
the present consider mesmerism simply as a distinct 
species ol somnambulism, into which it has been 
asserted that man has the capacity of passing, through 
the influence of his fellow-man. Were this all — 
did none other of the extraordinary allegations re- 
specting mesmerism exist, — this alone appears to 
me a subject of deep interest, and worthy of being 

submitted to that patient investigation, which should 
either confirm it as a fact. <>r banish it as an illusion. 
Mesmeric sleepwaking — it' proved to be a reality — 
will claim to be considered as one of the conditions 
of man, and. BS such, must concern all mankind — 



1 Dr. Elliotson, in the chapter on mesmerism in his Physiology, 
has adopted the term deeptoakingj because walking is but one result 
of the combination of the waking with the sleeping state, and be- 
cause in this state persons may not walk, or may even be unable to 
walk. 



46 MESMERISM. 

but especially the philosopher, who, in order to in- 
vestigate our nature truly, should explore it in its 
weakness and its strength, its integrity and its disorder. 
Sleep, fever, irritation of the nervous system, have 
each their several trains of physical and mental 
phenomena, which are anxiously investigated by him 
who would know man as he is. Even drunkenness 
has had its anatomists, and with w r hat fearful interest 
we strive to fathom the abyss of madness, as if we 
could evoke from thence the secret of our complicate 
and wonderful existence ! There is good sense in 
this. From the derangement of a machine we are 
often led to ascertain the uses of its several parts. 
Now, though mesmeric sleepwaking can scarcely be 
called a derangement of the animal economy, still it 
is an aberration from man's normal state ; and. so 
considered, cannot fail to be replete with instruction 
to the careful observer. Unless we peruse this page, 
our study of the great volume of human nature must 
be incomplete. 

Surely likewise, independently of the philosophical 
view of the question, all who share this suffering 
mortal frame — all who, during long and tedious 
hours, have vainly courted sleep, thai perverse power 
which, in the poet's beautiful words, is ** still last to 
come where it is wanted most/ 3 — all who mourn 
the past, or fear the future, cannot but be inter- 
ested in a discussion respecting the reality of a 
power in man to withdraw for a while the senses of 
his fellow-mortals from this world of troubles. 

In thus considering mesmerism as nothing more 
than a state to be investigated like any other state 



MESMERISM. 47 

into which man has the capacity of passing. I shall 
probably surprise those who have been accustomed 
to regard the matter either as too mysterious to 
claim affinity with aught on earth, or as too fanci- 
fully wild to be brought under the laws of rational 
research. It may be doubted also, whether, with 
some persons, our subject may not lose its charms, 
when robbed of its pontroversial title, and whether 
the plain view 1 have taken of the question may not 
equally offend the argumentative opposer who seeks 

to show his eloquence in dispute, and the warm par- 
tisan who would invest his favorite science with an 
awful and unknown dignity. Hut the earnest and 
impartial pupil of nature will be content to take his 
Stand with me on the sure ground of experimental 
proof, and. even should lie become my opponent, will 
attack the true subject in debate instead of the man 
of straw, which has BO long and 90 often been warred 
with under the name of mesmerism. 

The proofs, which I shall oiler, regarding tins pe- 
culiar phasis of our mortal state, will be drawn, 
almost exclusively, from the proceeds of my own 

observation. To make use of the materials accumu- 
lated by others, in order to construct a theory of 
one's own. has always appeared to me inconsistent 
with the earnestness of true inquiry. That deep 
conviction of the reality of hi> subject, which is an 
author's hfe and soul, is the result of personal ex- 
perience alone. Besides, it should be the aim, as I 
conceive, of everv one who undertakes a cause, to 
add to the stock of real information thereupon. 
Thus only can the boundaries of human knowledge 



48 MESMERISM. 

be enlarged ; — for what new fact can be elicited by 
those, who copy everlastingly from the old ? More- 
over, a person who observes for himself may per- 
chance remark what has hitherto escaped the notice 
of even clearer eyes than his. Let twenty men wit- 
ness a transaction, and the attention of each will 
probably be directed to a different feature of that 
transaction. By the combined result of such indi- 
vidual scrutiny, we come to a perception of the 
whole truth. Each carefully observed fact is an 
heirloom to mankind ; and he who verities a new 
phenomenon does more, perhaps, for science than 
he who constructs a theory. 

Before, however, bringing forward the records of 
my own personal experience, I must warn my reader 
that if he imagines I have anything miraculous to 
relate he will be disappointed. It is true that I 
might, were I so inclined, give a zest to my ]>;>_ 
by recording circumstances which were pa-sing 
strange; but I have avoided these, from reasons 
which partly regard myself, partly those whom I 
address. 

With respect to the latter. L think that persons in 
general would only be revolted by particulars which 
they would scarcely credit on any testimony; and 
thus I should rather injure than promote the cause I 
have undertaken to defend. 

Secondly, as concerning myself. For my own 
sake I shun those tracts of thought, which, if not 
belonging to superstition, at least closely border upon 
her domains. When once we pass the bounds of 
the definite and the probable, we can scarcely settle 



MESMERISM. 49 

with our own minds what degree of credit we ought 
to attach to the mystic circumstances that surround 
us, or on what basis we should place them. Of 
every fact of this nature there are ordinarily two 
explanations to be given — a rational, and a marvel- 
lous. The marvellous would lead us too far: the 
rational docs not content us. As. for instance, a 
rieepwaker describes to me what her family, in a 
distant house, are doing at a particular hour. I 
inquire subsequently into this, and find that she has 
been correct in every point. \o\v there are two 
interpretations of this seeming miracle: — ire may 

either suppose that the sleepwaker has really seen 

what she stated; or that, from her knowledge <»! 
what the occupations of her familj generally are, at 
a certain limn, she was enabled to divine, almost 

I'- truth. 

in: a Bleepwaker tells me — "Mj brother, 
who has been to the Savannah, and of whom we 

have not heard for -<>me months, IS returned, and is 

at this moment anchored off flushing. He is just 

Coining from watch, and on such a day he will he 

here.'" This i-> verified to the letter; hut again 
there are two method- of explaining wherefore : — 
either the sleepwaker was gifted with extraordinary 
knowledge and prescience, or. from expecting her 

brother about a certain time, she calculated on prob- 
abilities perhaps, more acutely than in her natural 
state: and this, combined with that sort of coinci- 
dence which occurs more frequently than some may 
suppose, i- sufficient to account for the verification 
of her assertions and her prophecy. This may be 



50 MESMERISM. 

true ; but I confess that such reasoning as the latter 
does not always satisfy me, and that, in my opinion, 
after subtracting from the account all of the marvel- 
lous that we possibly can, there will yet remain a 
residuum of something strange and perplexing. For 
this reason, I turn my attention to facts that appear 
to me more important, as well as more certain ; con- 
ceiving that to dwell on wonders, that are, at best, 
doubtful, is far from healthy to the mind. I have 
therefore always discouraged my sleepwakers from 
making to me extraordinary revelations, and I have 
endeavored to confine both them and myself within 
a walk — narrow, indeed, but safe ; less interesting, 
perhaps, but certainly more direct. 

All facts connected with the senses, or which 
illustrate the close affinity between the mesmeric r 
and his patient (indicative as they are of some me- 
dium of communication existing between them) seem 
to me unexceptionable in their tendency, and strictly 
relative to the influence we have to consider. To 
these then I have chiefly limited myself at the hazard 
of offending by over-caution, rather than by super- 
fluous zeal. Hence my narrative will have an hum- 
ble air, which may contrast oddly, perhaps, with the 
high terms in which I have spoken of the pretensions 
of mesmerism in my first book. I may be asked 
the cui bono of certain trifling details, and may be 
told that the experiments I have related are neither 
beautiful nor useful. To what end, it may be de- 
manded, do these sleepwakers perform things asleep 
which were better done awake ? I can imagine a 
critic saying — " Never was the i parturiunt montes/ 



MESMERISM. 51 

more admirably exemplified than in the work before 
us. We are told, in the first place, that the mesmer- 
iser withdraws a curtain that conceals a magic 
world, and we are then presented with nothing better 
than a Bartholomew show of farthing rushlights. 
We first read of awakened powers and intellectual 
influences that unlock the mysteries of nature, and, 
then, proceeding to the experiments, we meet with 
trash little better than the following: — 'Are you 
asleep ?' ' JTes !' — * Do y<»u see me .-' — * No V &c 
&c." This is ;ill easily said; but I beseech my 
reader to remember the vast disproportion between 
the experiments themsehres and deductions to be 
drawn from them: they are but mean steps to a 

mighty temple: yet they must be mounted before 

We can enter the sanctuary itself. I< this prelimina- 
ry humiliation in approaching a science peculiar to 

mesmerism? Lei u< turn to Newton's optics, where 
we shall find such small particularities as the fol- 
lowing: — "I made in a piece of lead a small hole 
with a pin, whose breadth was the forty-second part 
of an inch : for twenty-one of those pins laid to- 
gether took up the breadth of half an inch." We 
are neither amused nor prejudiced bv this, because 
we know to what mighty consequences the apparent 
trifles led. Bui in mesmerism unfortunately we look 
not forward thus: and unfortunately also there is no 
existing subject which more requites men to look 
beyond externals. The object experimented on is 
man ; and, in the very nature of things, w hatever 
has to do with man contains some of the ludicrous. 
Human life and the paires of Shakspeare will show 



52 MESMERISM. 

how near akin in us are tears and laughter, sublimity 
and littleness. Our postures, our gestures, our pe- 
culiarities of countenance may all become matter of 
mirth to each other of us. When their best friend 
falls down, the first impulse with most persons is to 
laugh. It is no wonder, then, that in mesmerism 
we experience a sense of the comic, which the in- 
animate objects that are operated upon in other 
sciences cannot excite. No one feels disposed to 
ridicule a crystal, or to smile at a mineral : but there 
will be, perhaps, moments in mesmerism, when " to be 
grave exceeds all powers of face." The motions of 
the mesmeriser especially must seem ridiculous to 
those who see him gesticulate, and know not to what 
end. He is using those means which experience 
has shown him to be most efficacious in calling forth 
the phenomena he desires to produce : — but the un- 
initiated cannot be aware of this, and an action 
that appears to want motive is essentially ludicrous. 
Any one who has stopped his ears to the music, 
while people are dancing, will remember how fantas- 
tic the scene of gaiety appeared to him. This, and 
more, I can allow. I have as lively of the 

ludicrous as any man, and could, myself, most easily 
travestie mesmerism, and exhibit it in a ridiculous 
point of view; for ridicule is always easy. I can 
also laugh, where a grave subject is goodhumoredly 
bantered ; as, for instance, where Hood writes a 
lively and pleasant article — into which one c 
plainly see no malice enters — on what he face- 
tiously calls sombamboozleism : and represents a 
Yorkshire grazier as much disappointed, when he 



MESMERISM. 53 

finds that mesmerism is not a new mode of fattening 
animals and has nothing to do with mangel wurzel. 
But there is something in solemn and malignant ridi- 
cule which is not so easy to be endured ; — though, 
indeed, we should remember that whether scoffers 
laugh at mesmerism or not can matter little. The 
Subject is not for them, nor for any who cannot look 
through the trifling to the important, without being 
diverted from their object by things which may make 
them smile at the moment but ponder deeply after-, 
wards: — a-, for example, the mesmeriser makes 
faces, and the sleepwaker. though seeing him not, 
imitates them exactly. Some may stop short at the 
ludicrous part of this; hut. tor him who views the 
as proving an unseen medium of commu- 
nication between the mesmeriser and his patient, the 
fact is lull of an absorbing interest which checks all 
lighter thoughts. Thus some have mocked at tin* 
simplicity of diction or of events that characterizes 
the writings of Word-worth, while others have ^ccn 
that the poet has only adopted nature's mode of teach- 
ing us philosophy. This, at [east, must be granted, 
The merest trifles aw interesting that suggest to us 
an action in man independent of his present organi- 
zation. Now mesmerism teems with more than slight 
indications of this : and we should treasure up such 
glimmerings of futurity — however faint, and how- 
ever presented to as — as inestimable proofs that we 
possess a germ erf being which God permits us to 
behold partially unfolded here, in order to confirm 
our faith as to its fuller development hereafter. 



54 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

This being premised, I proceed to give an account 
of the first experiments in mesmerism which it fell in 
my way to witness ; conceiving that such a narrative 
will form not only the simplest but the best com- 
mencement to the series of proofs I have to offer, 
respecting the state and characteristics of mesmeric 
sleepwaking. 

If to have been an unbeliever in the very existence 
of the state in question can add weight to my testi- 
mony, my reader, should he be also an heretic on the 
subject, may be assured that his incredulity in this 
respect can scarcely be greater than mine was up to 
the winter of 1836. That at the time I mention I 
should be both ignorant and prejudiced on the score 
of mesmerism will not surprise those who are aware 
of its long proscription in England, and the want of 
information upon it which till very lately prevailed 
there. 

In the course of a residence at Antwerp, a valued 
friend detailed to me some extraordinary results of 
mesmerism to which he had been eye-witness. I 
could not altogether discredit the evidence of one 
whom I knew to be both observant and incapable of 
falsehood; but I took refuge in the supposition that 
he had been ingeniously deceived. Reflecting, how- 
ever, that to condemn before I had examined was as 
unjust to others as it was unsatisfactory to myself. I 
accepted readily the proposition of my friend to in- 
troduce me to an acquaintance of his in Antwerp 
who had learned the practice of the mesmeric art 
from a German physician. We waited together oiu 
Mr. K , the mesmeriser, (an agreeable and well- 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 55 

informed person) and stated to him that the object 
of our visit was to prevail on him to exhibit to us a 
specimen of his mysterious talent. To this he at 
first replied that he was rather seeking to abjure a 
renown that had become troublesome, half the world 
viewing him as a conjuror, and the other half as a 
getter upof strange comedies ; but," he kindly added, 
"if you will promise me a strictly private meeting, I 
will, this evening, do all in my power to convince you 
that mesmerism is no delusion.' 3 This being agreed 
upon, together with a stipulation that the members of 

my own family should be present on the occasion, I, 

to remove all doubt of complicity from every mind, 

proposed thai Mr. K should mesmerise a person 

who should be a perfect stranger to him. To this he 

lily acceded ; and now the only difficulty was to 

find a subject foe our experiment At length we 

thought of a young person, in the middling class of 

life, who had often done line work tor the ladies of 
our family, and of whose character we had the most 
favorable knowledge. Her mother was Irish: her fa- 
ther, who had been dead some tune, had been a Bel- 
gian, and she spoke English, Flemish, and French, 

with perfect facility. Her widowed parent was chiefly 

supported by her industry, and. in the midst of trying 

circumstances, her temper was gay and cheerful, and 

her health excellent. That she had never seen Mr. 
K we were >ure : and of her probity and inca- 
pacity for feigning we had every reason to be con- 
vinced. With our request, conveyed to her through 
one of the ladies of our family, for whom she had 
conceived a warm affection, she complied without 



56 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

hesitation. Not being of a nervous, though of an 
excitable temperament, she had no fears whatever 
about what she was to undergo. On the contrary, 
she had rather a desire to know w T hat the sensation of 
being mesmerised might be. Of the phenomena 
which were to be developed in the mesmeric state 
she knew absolutely nothing. Thus all deceptive 
imitation of them on her part was rendered impos- 
sible. 

About nine o'clock in the evening our party assem- 
bled for what in foreign phrase is called f 1 line seance 

magnetique." Anna M , our mesmerisce, was 

already with us. Mr. K arrived soon after, and 

was introduced to his young patient, whose name we 
had purposely avoided mentioning to him in the 
morning — not that we feared imposition <>n either 
hand, but that we were determined, by every precau- 
tion, to prevent any one from alleging thai imposition 
had been practised. Utterly unknown as the parlies 
were to each other, a game played by two confede- 
rates was plainly out of the question. Almost im- 
mediately after the entrance of Mr. K we pro- 
ceeded to the business of the evening. By his 

directions, Mademoiselle M placed herself in an 

arm-chair at one end of the apartment, while he oc- 
cupied a seat directly facing hers. He then took 
each of her hands in one of his, and sat in such a 
manner as that the knees and feet of both should he 
in contact. In this position he remained tor some 
time motionless, attentively regarding her with eyei 
as unwinking as the lidless orbs which Coleridge has 
attributed to the Genius of Destruction. We had 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 57 

been told previously to keep utter silence, and none 
of our circle — composed of some five or six persons 
— felt inclined to transgress the order. To me, 
novice as I was at that time in such matters, it was 
a moment of absorbing interest. That which I had 
heard mocked at as foolishness — that which I my- 
self had doubted as a dream. was perhaps about to 
he brought home to my conviction, and established 

for ever in my mind as a reality. Should the present 
trial prove successful, how much of my past experi- 
ence must be remodeled and reversed ! 

Convinced as 1 have since been to what valuable 
conclusions the phenomena of mesmerism may con- 
duct the inquirer, never, perhaps, have I been more 
impressed with the importance of its pretensions than 
at that moment when my doubts of their validity 
were either to be strengthened or removed. Con- 
centrating mj attention upon the motionless pair. I 
observed that Mademoiselle M seemed at her 

ea-e. and occasionally smiled, or -lanced at the 

embled party: but her <\<-. as it' by a charm, 

always reverted to those of her mesmeriser, and at 
length seemed unable t«> turn away from them. 
Then a heaviness, a- of deep, seemed to weigh down 
her eyelids, and to pervade the expression of her 
countenance; her head drooped on one side; her 
breathing became regular ; at length her eyes closed 
entirely, and. to all appearance, she was calmly 
asleep in just seven minutes bom the time when 

Mr. K first commenced his operations. I should 

haw observed that, a- soon as the first symptom of 
drowsiness was manifested, the mesmeriser had with- 



58 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

*» 

drawn his hands from those of Mademoiselle M ■ 

and had commenced what are called the " mesmeric 
passes," 1 conducting his fingers slowly downward, 
without contact, along the arms of the patient. For 

about five minutes Mademoiselle M continued 

to repose tranquilly, when suddenly she began to 
heave deep sighs, and to turn and toss in her chair. 
She then called out, " Je me trouve malade ! Je 
m'etouffe ! " and, rising in a wild manner, she con- 
tinued to repeat, " Je m'etouffe ! " evidently laboring 
under an oppression of the breath. But all this time 
her eyes remained fast shut, and. at the command of 
her mesmeriser, she took his arm, and walked — still 

with her eyes shut — to the table. Mr. K then 

said, "Voulezvous que je vous eveille ? * •• Oui. 
oui," she exclaimed, " Je m'etouffe." Upon this. 

Mr. K again operated with his hands, but in a 

different set of movements, and. taking out his hand- 
kerchief, agitated the air around the patient, who 
forthwith opened her eyes, and stared about the 
room like a person awaking from sleep. No tra< 
of her indisposition, however, appeared to remain, 
and, soon shaking off all drowsiness, she was able to 
converse and laugh as cheerfully as usual. On being 
asked what she remembered of her sensations, she 
said that she had only a general idea of having felt 
unwell and oppressed ; that she had wished to open 
her eyes, but could not. They felt as if lead were 
on them. Of having walked to the table she had no 
recollection. Notwithstanding her having suffered, 

1 This terra means nothing more than such motions as I have 
described. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 59 

she was desirous of being again mesmerised, and sat 
down fearlessly to make a second trial. This time it 
was longer before her eyes closed, and she never 
seemed to be reduced to more than a state of half 
unconsciousness. When the mesmeriser asked her 
if she slept, she answered in the tone of utter drow- 
siness, " Je dors, et je ne dors pas." This lasted 

some time, when Mr. K declared that he was 

afraid of fatiguing his patient (and probably his spec- 
tators too), and that he should disperse the mesmeric 
fluid. To do so, however, seemed not so easy a 
matter as the first time when he awoke the sleep- 
waker. With difficulty she appeared to rouse her- 
self, and even after having spoken a lew words to us, 
and risen from her chair. ^\w suddenly relapsed into 
a state of torpor, and fell prostrate to the ground, as 

if perfectly insensible* Mr. K entreating us not 

to be alarmed, raised her up. placed her in a chair, 
and supported her head with his hand. It was then 
that I distinctly recognised one of the asserted phe- 
nomena of mesmerism. The head of Mademoiselle 

M followed everywhere, with unerring certainty, 

the hand of her mesmeriser, and seemed irresistibly 
attracted to it, as iron to the load-tone. At length 

Mr. K succeeded in thoroughly awaking his 

patient, who, on being interrogated respecting her 
past sensations, said that she retained a recollection 
of her state of semi-consciousness, during which she 
much desired to have been able to sleep wholly ; but 
of her having fallen to the ground, or of what had 
passed subsequently, she remembered nothing what- 
ever. To other inquiries she replied that the drowsy 



60 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

*► 

sensation which first stole over her was rather of an 
agreeable nature, and that it was preceded by a slight 
tingling, which ran down her arms in the direction of 
the mesmeriser's fingers. Moreover, she assured us 
that the oppression she had at one time felt was not 
fanciful, but real ; not mental, but bodily, and was 
accompanied by a peculiar pain in the region of the 
heart, which, however, ceased immediately on the 
dispersion of the mesmeric sleep. These statements 
were the rather to be relied upon, inasmuch as the 
girl's character was neither timid nor imaginative. 

Second Sitting. 

On this occasion Mademoiselle M sat down, 

as she assured me afterwards, with a resolution to 
resist the mesmeric drowsiness to the utmost, and 
with a strong impression that she should not sleep. 
This want of cooperation on her part seemed to ren- 
der the mesmeriser's task more difficult, yet in about 
twenty minutes she was brought into that state of 
imperfect slumber into which she had fallen on the 
first evening. As then, so now, she affirmed. " Je 
dors, et je ne dors pas;" while all the time she 
seemed incapable of opening her eyes. At other 
times she expressed an impatience of her semi-con- 
scious state, and exclaimed, " Faites-moi dormir tout- 
a-fait ; " but then again she murmured, " Non, vous 
ne le pouvez pas." In this half torpid state she re- 
mained so long, that we feared no other result would 

be obtained ; and Mr. K himself turned round 

his head towards us, and shook it, as much as to say 
that he despaired of success. At length, however. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKINC. 61 

appearing to rally his powers, he laid his hands upon 
the shoulders of his patient, who almost instantly 
heaved a deep sigh, and fell back in her chair with 
every symptom of the profoundest slumber. Soon 
after this, I observed that her head, as on the last 
occasion, followed every motion of the mesmeriser's 

hands. Mr. K now asked her if she slept, and 

she replied softly, but distinctly, " Oui, je dors." He 
then asked her if she would quit her chair, and walk 
a little, but to this proposition she strongly objected, 
declaring that she wished to rest, and that she thought 
she should fall were she to attempt to get up. Mr. 
K . however, assured her that such would not be 

the case, and rising from his chair, and going to a 

short distance, he made a motion with his arms, as if 
he VTOIlld draw her towards Inm. Sighing deeply, 
she then go! up and moved towards him. but tottered, 
and exclaimed. " Oh je vais tomber." Upon this the 
E&esmeriser seized her hand, and said, in a tone of 
decision. " Non, vous ne tomberez pas." In effect, 
she afterwards stood firmly, and even walked about 

the room, holding the arm of Mr. K , but still 

retaining the expression of a sleeping person, though 
the extreme torpor which weighed down her head 
before she left her chair seemed, in a great measure, 
removed. To all appearance her eyes were closely 
shut, and there was even ;i sealed look about the lids 
which was very remarkable. Notwithstanding this, 
she appeared to be very sensible to the light, and 
never approached the lamp without complaining of 
the glare. One of our party having expressed a 
doubt that she slept, and this having been explained 
6 



62 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

to her by the mesmeriser (for she did not seem to 
attend to any one else), she exclaimed, with an air of 
surprise, u Yes, certainly, I am asleep." During the 
time (upwards of an hour) that she remained thus 
abstracted, or entranced, I noted the following phe- 
nomena : — 

1st. Attraction towards the mesmeriser — mental and 

physical. — She could not endure Mr. K to 

leave her for an instant ; and there was a nervous 
anxiety in the manner in which she often exclaimed, 
" Mais, il ne faut pas me quitter." The most appa- 
rently uncomfortable posture seemed agreeable to her 
so long as she could rest her head on the mesmeri- 
ser's hand. If another hand was substituted, how- 
ever adroitly, she was immediately aware of the 
change, and betrayed uneasiness. On one occasion 
I took the mesmeriser's place at a moment when lie 
stood behind her. After a few seconds, an expire 
sion of utter discontent and repugnance came over 
her countenance, and she removed her head from my 

support. At this moment Mr. K was stealing 

aw T ay noiselessly to another part of the room, and I ob- 
served that her face turned towards him. and followed 
his every motion. When he made a gesture as if he 
would beckon her towards him, she got up immediate- 
ly, and walked to where he was, threading her way. 
exactly as he had done, between the chairs. tabi- 
&c, without stumbling or coming in contact with any 
obstacle. 

2dly. A knowledge of what the mesmeriser ate or 
drank, indicating community of sensation with him. — 
This phenomenon appearing to me to constitute one 






MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 63 

of the most interesting features of the mesmeric state, 

I took particular pains to verify it. Mr. K stood 

behind the sleepwaker, but in contact with her (for 
otherwise the experiment did not seem to answer) 
one hand slightly touching her shoulder. In this po- 
sition of the parties, we handed to Mr. K from 

behind (so as to prevent any possibility of the sleep- 
waker seeing what we were about, even had her eyes 
been open) different things to drink or eat. While 
the mesmeriser was taking these, Mademoiselle 

M imitated precisely all the motions of tasting 

and swallowing, just as if she herself had taken the 
substances into her mouth. On being asked what 
she tasted, she Stated correctly what the mesmeriser 
was occupied with at the moment. In this way she 
recognised tea. wine, and water, and distinguished 
between them, change them as often as we would. 

The accuracy with which she described a peculiar 

kind of roll, which we gave Mr. K to eat, was 

extraordinary. " (V if est pas du pain ; cc n'est pas 
precisement du biscuit. C'est quelquechose que les 
matelots mangent." The last assertion was perfectly 
correct, for at Antwerp this kind of roll is a favorite 
article of diet with the sailors. 

3dly. An increased quickness of perception;. — Pri- 
vately and with precaution, I changed rings with the 
mesmeriser. The moment the sleepwaker subsequently 
took his hand, she exclaimed. " Vous avez quelque 
chose, qui n'est pas de vous !" " A qui est ce done ?" 

asked Mr. K : she immediately named the right 

owner. I should remark that, in her waking state, 
she assured me she did not know whether even I 



64 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING* 

wore a ring or not. Another proof of the acuteness 
of her perceptions was the accuracy with which she 
distinguished her mesmeriser's hand from every other. 
We made the experiment together with her mesmer- 
iser, giving her all our hands successively many 
times, in a different order, but she invariably recog- 
nised the hand of Mr. K at the first touch, ex- 
claiming, " Ah c'est de lui." 

4thly. A development of the power of vision. — I am 
aware that I here approach dangerous ground. Our 
very nature rises up in arms against whatever seems 
incompatible with our personal experience ; and that 
men should, under any circumstances, see otherwise 
than in the appointed way of vision appears so entirely 
to contradict the very purposes of our organization, 
that we shrink from the bare mention of such an ano- 
maly. Accordingly, what is called clair-voi/ancc has 
been ever the great stumblingblock to the unbeliever 
in mesmerism. To decide that mesmeric sleepwakera 
do really possess the faculty of seeing through closed 
lids, or other obstacles, would in this place be pre- 
mature. I waive that question till 1 can place it 
upon the sure ground of proof. But allowing to pass 
for the present an hypothesis which has been sug- 
gested to me ; namely, that mesmerised persons, 
being in a state of nervous excitement, see. like those 
afflicted with a peculiar irritability of the retina. 
with less light and through a smaller aperture be- 
tween the lids, than others ; still, even the fact that 
the sensibility of vision can be thus increased by 
apparently insignificant means, appears to me highly 
interesting and worthy of investigation. This I can 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 65 

safely affirm — that there was something new and 
astonishing in the manner in which Mademoiselle 
M distinguished objects. The closest observa- 
tion of the six members of the party, who witnessed 
the experiments I am now detailing, could detect not 
the slightest opening of hei eye-lids ; nevertheless 
she gave undoubted proofs of possessing a consider- 
able degree of vision, for she recognised and named 
every person pit -cut. when brought up to her in any 
order. The exercise, however, of whatever new 
mode of vision she had acquired, appeared to her 
difficult and fatiguing; and. when an object was held 

before her. she usually declared it to be too small lor 
her to know what it was. \\ hen urged to look at 
any thing, she expressed th< est repugnance to 

do so ; and it was only at the reiterated command of 
the mesmeriser that she aroused herself to the acces- 
sary effort. At those times, her whole deportment 

was that of B person who wished to rest, yet who by 
some external force was compelled into exertion. No 
exorcised spirit could have done its work more grudg- 
ingly; and. like the enchantress evoked by Odin, she 
continually entreated to be left to repose. Sometimes 
addressing those around her. when asked to look 

at any object, she exclaimed. " Ynu. who see so 
much better than I do. why do not you rather tell 
m what it i-. 1 beg of you to tell me/' Twice, 
however, she gave singular proofs of correct vision. 
Some music-paper was put into her hand, and she 
was asked what was written on it. She replied, 
" There is nothing written on it; it is music paper." 
The mesmeriser gave her his watch, and asked her 



66 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

*. 

the hour. After the usual reluctance and some de- 
lay, and moving of her fingers over the watch-glass, 
in the direction of the hands, she named the hour 
and minute with precision. 

During this sitting, there was no return of the op- 
pression from which Mademoiselle M had suf- 
fered on first being mesmerised. Both in countenance 
and manner she remained perfectly calm. 

The experiments being at an end, she was asked if 
she wished to awake, when she answered in the 
affirmative, but at the same time declared her ina- 
bility to do so unless the mesmerise* took off the 
heaviness from her eyes, as in the preceding sitting. 

Upon this Mr. K made some lateral motions 

with his hands, across her face, as if he wore removing 
something from before it. and in about a minute the 
sleepwaker opened her eyes 3 rubbed them, and stared 
about, like a person awaking from heavy -lumber. 
Her first question was. "How long have I been 
asleep?" She then complained of considerable 
heaviness in her limbs, but this was soon removed, 
as it seemed, by some mesmeric " passes" which Mr 

K made over them. When interrogated as to 

what she remembered of her past state, she said that 
the last thing which she distinctly recollected was the 
mesmeriser's laying his hands on her shoulders — 
that they felt to her burning hot. and as heavy as 
lead, and seemed to weigh her down into uncon- 
sciousness. All subsequent to this was a blank, with 
the exception of a confused notion, as of something 
in a dream that many hands had touched her own. 






MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 67 

Third Sitting. 

This time, Mr. K brought to us, as his 

mesmeric patient, a young man of about seventeen 
years of age, whom I shall call Theodore, the son of 

most respectable persons in Antwerp. Mr. K 

bad already mesmerised him several times, and had 
excited our curiosity respecting him by detailing to 
us extraordinary proofs of his powers of vision in the 
state of >lcep\vakiiiLr. From the moment of his en- 
tering the room, this young man prepossessed every 
one in his favor. His quiet, and even timid man- 
ners, and his ingenuous countenance, made us feel 
that we might rely upon, as genuine, any phenome- 
na ho might exhibit Ho \\;i< in a state of per- 
fect health. 

In about ton miinin -s from the time he was sub- 
mitted, m the usual manner, to the influence of Mr. 

K . he gave tokens of having passed into the 

mesm eric state, his bead following every motion of 
the mesmeriser'a hand. Slight shudderings, from 

time to time, seemed to pass over his frame, and 
were occasionally repeated during the whole time 

of his sleep\\akil)L r . This UnUSUal State Wafl aeeoin- 
panied by a marked change in his demeanor. He 
seemed to have lost his shyness, and conversed 

with Mr. K in an unembarrassed manner, as 

if no longer conscious of the presence of strangers; 
He became more animated, frequently laughed aloud, 
and even went the length of committing ;i pleasant- 
ry. When led up to a very pretty irirl in company, 
the mesmeriser (in order to try his powers of vision) 



68 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

said, " Savez vous qui est ce jeune hornme 1 " to 
which Theodore replied directly, " Je voudrais bien 
voir un jeune homme aussi joli que cela." 

The principal phenomena which I noted in the 

case of Mademoiselle M were all developed in 

this sleepwaker, with the slight exception of his 
more patiently suffering the mesmeriser to go to a 
short distance from him. On the former, however, 
trying to steal from the apartment as noiselessly as 
possible, he rushed to him and dragged him back 
with considerable agitation, which was only calmed 
by the mesmeriser caressing him, as it were, with 
the hand. On all occasions he testified the - ro g si 

attachment and affection to Mr. K . frequently 

leaning his head upon the shoulder of the latter, and 
running to him. when placed at a little distance, on 
the slightest motion of his hand, with such simple 
and natural gestures as a child uses when, half 
playfully, it runs for shelter to its mother'- side. 

His physical attraction towards the mesmeriser was 
as strongly marked 8U3 the mental. A- In* was sitting- 
down, Mr. K approached his hand to the leg 

of the patient, and then slowly drew it upward. 
The limb, as if compelled to follow, rose also. and. 

as long as Mr. K held his hand over it. remained 

in a raised position. 

A very important proof that this physical attrac- 
tion was wholly independent of the patients imagin- 
ation was the following: — Theodore was standing 
with his back to the mesmeriser. while some one en- 
gaged his attention in front, and the mesmeriser going 
to a good distance, so as to render any cognizance 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 69 

of his gestures by feeling impossible, gently beck- 
oned towards him the patient, who actually ran back- 
wards for some steps, then, turning quickly round, 
hastened to the mesmeriser. Community of sensa- 
tion was manifested not only by a recognition of 
what the mesmerise! ate ofr drank, but in another 
way. which seemed lp indicate thai the sense of feel- 
ing, as well as of taste, was placed in some mysteri- 
ous communication with the corresponding function 

of the mesmcriser. Mr. K having left Theodore 

standing apart for a few instants, went to the fire and 
warmed himself. During this time the patient rub- 
bed his hands and spread them out, as if over the 
flame, precisely as the mesmeriser did, and with a 
look of evident satisfaction and enjoyment Mr. 

K said, " Que faites tous la Theodore ? " " Je 

m'echaufie " was the answer. 

Our young patient also exhibited other phenom- 
ena, which I have since found to l>e generally char- 
acteristic of mesmeric sleepwa&ing, and which 1 shall 
call — 

Occasional Community of Motion with the Mesmer- 
iser. — halation from all others than the Mes- 
n a risi /". 

In illustration of the first. I might adduce the fact, 
that there was no person present who did not remark 
that, in walking, Theodore took the step and air of 

Mr. K as if his body were a machine directed 

by the mesm&iseri But this may be objected to as 
a proof not sufficiently rigorous. The correctness, 
however, of the following experiment cannot be con- 
tested. 



70 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

The mesmeriser was placed with his back to the 
patient. In this position, the former made sundry 
grimaces and contortions of visage, which were ex- 
actly and simultaneously imitated by the latter. 

Secondly. Upon first passing into the mesmeric 
state, Theodore seemed absolutely insensible to every 
other than the mesmeriser's voice. Some of our 
party went close to him, and shouted his name, but 

he gave no tokens of hearing us, until Mr. K , 

taking our hands, made us touch those of Theodore 
and his own at the same time. This he called put- 
ting us " en rapport " with the patient. After this, 
Theodore seemed to hear our voices equally with 
that of the mesmeriser, but by no means to pay an 
equal attention to them. 

With regard to development of vision, the eyes of 
the patient appeared to be firmly shut during the 
whole sitting, and yet he gave the following proofs 
of accurate sight : — 

Without being guided by our voices (for in making 
the experiment we kept carefully silent) he distin- 
guished between the different persons present and 
the colors of their dresses. He also named with ac- 
curacy various objects on the table, such as a minia- 
ture picture, a drawing by Mr. K . &c. 

When the mesmeriser left him, and ran quickly 
amongst the chairs, tables, &c, of the apartment, he 
followed him, running also, and taking the same 
turns, without once coming in contact with any thing 
that stood in his way. 

He told the hour accurately by Mr. K 's 

watch, 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 71 

He plaved several games at dominos with the dif- 
ferent members of our family, as readily as if his 
eyes had been perfectly open. On these occasions 
the lights were placed in front of him. and he ar- 
ranged his dominos on the table with their backs to 
the candles in such a manner that, when I placed 
my head in the same position as his own. I could 
scarcely, through the shade distinguish one from the 
other. Yet he took them up unerringly, never hesi- 
tated in his play, generally won t ho game, and an- 
nounced the sum of the spots on such of his dominos 
as remained over at the end, before his adversaries 
could count theirs. One of our party, a lady, who 
had been extremely incredulous OH the subject of 

mesmerism, stooped down bo as to look under his 

eyelids all the time he played, and declared herself 
convinced and >atisiied that his eyes were perfectly 
closed. It was not always. howe\er. thai Theodore 
could be prevailed upon to exercise his power of vis- 
ion. Some words, written by the mesiueriser, of a 
tolerable size, being shown him, he declared (as 

Mademoiselle M did on another occasion) that 

it was too small for him to distinguish. 

Towards the conclusion of the sitting, the patient 
seemed much fatigued, and. going to the sofe, ar- 
ranged a pillow for himself comfortably under his 
head, after which he appeared to pass into a state 
more akin to natural sleep than his late sleepwaking. 

Mr. K allowed him to repose in this manner for 

a short time, and then awoke him by the usual for- 
mula. A very few motions of the hand were suffi- 
cient to restore him to full consciousness, and to his 



72 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

usual character. The fatigue of which he had so 
lately complained seemed wholly to have passed away, 
together with the memory of all that he had been 
doing for the last hour. 

I must now pause to set before my reader my own 
state of mind respecting the facts I had witnessed. 
I perceived that important deductions might be drawn 
from them, and that they bore upon disputed ques- 
tions of the highest interest to man, connected with 
the three great mysteries of being — life, death, and 
immortality. On these grounds I was resolved to 
enter upon a consistent course of inquiry concerning 
them : though, as yet, while all was new and won- 
derful to my apprehensions, I could scarcely do more 
than observe and verify phenomena. It was, how- 
ever, necessary that my views, though for the present 
bounded, should be distinct. I had already asked 
respecting mesmeric sleepwaking — does it exist? 
and to this question the cases which had fallen under 
my notice, and which were above suspicion, seemed 
to answer decidedly in the affirmative. But it was 
essential still further to inquire — does it exist so gen- 
erally as to be pronounced a part — though a rarely 
developed part — of the human constitution ? In 
order to determine this, it was requisite to observe 
how far individuals of different ages, stations, and 
temperaments, were capable of mesmeric sleepwak- 
ing. I resolved, therefore, by experiments on as ex- 
tensive a scale as possible, to ascertain whether the 
state in question were too commonly exhibited to be 
exceptional or idiosyncratic. Again, the two cases 
that I had witnessed coincided in characteristics. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 73 

But could this coincidence be accidental ? It might 
still be asked, were the phenomena they displayed 
uncertain, mutable, such as might never occur again ; 
— or were they orderly, invariable, the growth of 
fixed causes, which, being present, implied their pre- 
sence also? In fine, was mesmeric sleepwaking,! not 
only a state, but entitled to rank a^ a distinct state, 
clearly and permanently characterized : and, as such, 
set apart from all other abnormal conditions of man ? 
On its pretensions to be so considered, rested, I con- 
ceived, its claims to notice and peculiar investigation. 
To decide this point was. therefore, one of my chief 
objects ; and respecting it I was determined to seek 
that certainty which can only be attained by a care- 
ful comparison of facts occurring under the same 
circumstances. To sum up my intentions, — I de- 
sired to show that man. through externa] human in- 
fluence, is capable of a species of sleepwaking differ- 
ing from the common, not only inasmuch as it is 
otherwise produced, but as it displays quite other 
characteristics when produced. 

Thus the inquiry on which I desired to enter was 
twofold, for I had to consider — 

1st. Sleepwaking, as mesmerically induced. 

2d. As possessing, when so induced, its own class 
of phenomena. 

Before relating with what success I pursued the 
above objects, it is necessary that I should say a few 
words as to the plan to which I shall adhere in the 
detail of my " proofs by experiments." Each branch 
of my inquiry ought, perhaps, to be treated sepa- 
rately ; but, in that case, I should have, in the first 
7 



74 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

•s 

instance, only to draw up a barren statement of the 
number of different persons, in whom I had seen sleep- 
waking induced ; and then I should have to return to 
these same cases for an elucidation of the constancy 
of the phenomena. 

This would be at once cumbrous and useless, and 
I therefore take the simpler course of detailing my 
mesmeric cases just as they occurred, strengthening 
my cause at once by their number and by their iden- 
tity of feature. That I should thus let the two argu- 
ments run parallel has this advantage also, — I present 
a portrait of mesmeric sleepwaking from the outset — 
a very needful preliminary. So at least will they who 
differ from me in opinion be sure that they and I are 
speaking of the same thing. 

It may be also that to paint mesmerism as it is will 
remove objections to its validity more surely than a 
method more elaborate. It should never be forgot- 
ten that in all states there is a spurious and a true ; 
and of our unfortunate subject it may especially be 
affirmed that there exist many counterfeit presenta- 
tions. It has been drawn by its enemies, and even 
in early times by its friends, as a convulsed and de- 
crepit hag, with Superstition on her right hand and 
Spleen upon her left ; but the influence whereof I 
treat is of a tranquil brow, and has Truth and Reason 
for her handmaids. Should I become tedious by 
presenting again and again the same features to view. 
I have at least thus much to urge in my defence : 
each successive copy of the original type strengthens 
the evidence that the thing is ; while, if the picture 
once drawn be faithfully adhered to, there will be 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 75 

every reason to conclude that the thing is such as 
represented, and no other. Facts, unaccompanied 
by deductions, may, indeed, be wearisome ; but, at 
present, the great point is to portray phenomena as 
they occurred ; for a discussion upon mesmerism is 
not like a discussion upon any known science, which 
men are at least agreed to treat as a reality. The 
inquiry is not merely into its nature but its very ex- 
istence. 

I must further observe that, with regard to the 
great characteristics of mesmerism, I have never had 
occasion to change my opinion from the beginning. 
I trusted to my impressions then, on the ground that 
the first view of a subject often seizes its character 
the best, and that a fresh eye will !i.\ upon the salient 
points of phenomena, to which habit may afterwards 
blunt the perceptions. Thus reasoning, I have not 
since been convicted of erroneous views. The pro- 
duction of a bodily sleep through another's influence, 
while the mind continued waking — the community 
of motion and sensation with the mesmeriser — the 
development of the perceptions, — these were the 
phenomena which, from the first, struck me in 
mesmerism as the most important, the most replete 
with interest; and they seem so still. I have beheld 
them often enough repeated to fix in my mind a con- 
viction of their truth ; and, believing, as I do, that 
they may be brought home to every man's business 
and bosom, I am anxious to impart to others the 
belief which I possess myself. 

Thus, then, it is my intention plainly to narrate 
that which I have witnessed, leaving it in general to 



76 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

my reader to refer to their separate tracts of inquiry 
the phenomena which I shall detail, and to mark their 
correspondence with others previously observed. 
Nor shall I confine myself altogether to a descrip- 
tion of the completed state of mesmerism, since I 
conceive it to be interesting in its dawn also ; and it is 
instructive to see in certain cases the same phenom- 
ena, indicated in their rise, which were, in others, 
developed during their progress. At any rate the 
beginnings of mesmeric sleepwaking, even if they 
go no further, tend to prove that there is an influence 
which one human being can exert over another, — 
hitherto but partially observed, yet more general than 
is usually supposed. By such cases my first lemma 
is advantaged, even if the second is not benefited 
by it. 

It may be even that the imperfect cases of mesmer- 
ism present the strongest testimony to its truth. As 
a force confessedly acting on the nervous system, the 
strong and the insusceptible should be altogether sub- 
tracted from its influence, so that the circumstance 
of such persons being subdued at all is more con- 
vincing than the entire subjugation of the weaker and 
more sensitive. That a healthy, unimaginative man 
should be reduced to a sort of spell-bound slumber 
in five or ten minutes, by the agency of another, 
under circumstances the most unfavorable to sleep, 
strikes the mind, perhaps, as much as any of the 
mightier miracles of mesmerism. It is a fact, of 
which the senses are clearly cognizant, and it has 
made its converts accordingly. It is true that, in the 
physical sciences, the detail of an imperfect experi- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 77 

ment is altogether futile ; but it is not so in respect 
of the investigation of mind. Relative to this, the 
merest trifle is important, the slightest indication 
interesting. Besides, every state has a beginning, a 
middle, and an end ; and the first is surely best ex- 
amined when it remains stationary, instead of merging 
rapidly in the others. Let my reader, then, keep in 
mind that I divide mesmeric sleepwaking into imper- 
fect and perfect ; the former being altogether in har- 
mony with and elucidating the latter. 

In all the subsequent experiments, I was myself 
the operator, having, through the kindness of Mr. 

K , received such instructions as put it in my own 

power to practise the mesmeric art ; for it is plain 
that the course on which I was desirous of entering, 
required that I should be independent of the extra- 
neous assistance which I could by no means always 
have at hand, and demanded the full force of the 
most careful and personal experience, 

CASE I. 

The first person whom I succeeded in mesmerising 
was Theodore. The phenomena of the third sitting 
were repeated — with this additional proof of the 
patient's community of sensation with the mesmer- 
iser : — 

A member of our party, having heard it asserted 
that mesmerised persons could feel any injury that 
was inflicted on the mesmeriser, standing behind me, 
pulled my hair, without warning, and without a pos- 
sibility of my patient being made aware of the cir- 
cumstance in any usual way ; — for, first, his eyes 



78 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING.-> 

were closed ; secondly, his head was bent down and 
drooping, as frequently happens in the mesmeric 
sleepwaking; thirdly, the position in which I stood 
completely screened from him the person who tried 
the experiment. Nevertheless, Theodore immediately 
winced as if he himself had felt the injury, and put 
up his hand to that part of the back of my head 
where my hair had been pulled, throwing his arm 
round my neck, as if to defend me from any other 
attacks that might be made upon me. 

I observed that when he exerted himself to play at 
dominos he was more particularly affected by those 
slight convulsive twitchings which I had remarked 
on a former occasion. 

CASE II. 

A. L , a Belgian gentleman of our acquaint- 
ance, who thoroughly laughed at mesmerism, con- 
sented, mockingly, one evening, to let me mesmerise 
him. He was twenty-three years of age — in good 
health; — in character imaginative, but of a scoffing 
turn, and lively even to boisterousness. On first 
sitting down, while I held his hands in the usual 
mesmeric manner, he laughed much and made ridi- 
culous faces, opening his eyes, and pretending, in his 
turn, to mesmerise me. Shortly, however, the same 
drowsy expression which I had remarked in Made- 
moiselle M stole over his countenance. He be- 
came serious, and seemed to struggle against the 
torpor which was evidently coming over him. At 
length, as if disliking to be vanquished, he got up 
from his chair with evident effort, and walked about 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 79 

the room, but soon, complaining of an irresistible 
drowsiness, lay down, as if he did not at all know 
what he was doing, on the sofa, in the presence of 
ladies, before whom, under other circumstances, he 
never would have dreamed of committing such a 
breach of etiquette. 1 came to him, and, curious to 
know how far my influence over him might extend, 
made the usual mesmeric passes in front of him. 
Upon this, his upper eyelids, with a motion almost 
as slow and imperceptible as that of the hour hand 
of a watch, began to fall, while his eyeballs seemed 
drawn upwards. After a time, the lids became 
stationary and remained a little open, showing only 
the whites of the eye. His head began to follow the 
motions of my hand. 1 now asked him if he slept, 
to which he replied, in a very low voice, "Not 
altogether; 1 wish 1 could." " Do you sutler in any 
way ? " 1 inquired. " Ves. 1 have a pain in the back 
of my head." 

Upon this, I made mesmeric passes over the part 
affected, and soon after asked — 

Q. — Do you feel better now? 

A. — Yes. the pain is quite gone. 

Q. — Do you wish to be awakened? 

A. — No, I wish to sleep more soundly. 

Q. — Why do you not open your eyes wider? 

A. — I cannot; it is as if lead were on them (lis 
sont comme plombes). 

Q,. — Can you see any thing ? 

A. — I see you. 

Q,. — Nothing else ? 

A. — Nothing whatever. 



80 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

I now made a motion as if I were going away, 
when suddenly the patient seized my hands, one in 
each of his, and exclaimed, " You must not go away, 
on any account." After this, he grasped my hands 
so tightly that it would have been no easy matter for 
me to liberate them. Fearing to irritate him, I re- 
mained quiet, and as long as I did so he lay perfectly 
motionless, but always with his eyes a little open. 
His complexion, which was naturally pale, was 
changed to a ghastly hue, and his whole appearance 
was so death-like that the spectators in the room be- 
came alarmed, and I own that I was myself uneasy. 
To my questions, however, he replied that he did 
not wish to wake, — that he was very well, but that 
I must not leave him. Thus circumstanced, I scarcely 
knew what course to take. That he should be awak- 
ened was desirable, for it was late ; but every effort 
that I made to free my hands only made him grasp 
them more firmly. My position was sufficiently 
ridiculous. I had raised a spirit which I could not 
quell, and the work of my own hands had become 
as unmanageable as the creation of Frankenstein. 
At length, after matters had remained in this state a 
full hour, I so strongly insisted upon his awaking, 
that he reluctantly permitted me to take the necessary 
measures for arousing him. I then made before the 
patient the motions which are usually employed for 
dispersing the mesmeric slumber ; and it was curious 
to observe how quickly, by means (as it seemed) of 
these few and simple gestures, the torpor passed 
away. At the same time, the natural color and ap- 
pearance returned to the countenance of my patient. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 81 

who got up, rubbed his eyes, looked much confused 
at having slept in the company of ladies (a circum- 
stance that shocked his foreign politeness), and, with 
many apologies, bade us hastily good night. The 
next day, when I called to inquire after him, he 
seemed to be half ashamed of his mesmeric exploits, 
but owned that the way in which he had been affected 
was at least a convincing proof to him of the influ- 
ence he had denied. A drowsiness, he said, and 
slight confusion of head were still felt by him ; and 
these, he declared, were relieved by my moving my 
hand across his forehead. When I asked him what 
he remembered of his mesmeric state, he said that it 
seemed to him as if he had always retained in it a 
sort of twilight consciousness, and that he recollected 
having been very anxious to exchange these " twink 
lings of oblivion ,? for a deeper slumber. Of my 
having spoken to him, however, or of his having an- 
swered me, he remembered nothing ; and when I 
told him how forcibly he had kept me near him, he 
was much surprised. 

Shortly after making the foregoing experiments, I 
returned to England, it being the spring of 1837. 
Like a person full of a new subject, I discoursed, 
amongst my friends, upon what I had witnessed of 
the mesmeric influence. The result may be ima- 
gined. Those who knew me well were forced to be- 
lieve that I had really beheld the phenomena I de- 
scribed ; but here they were content to stop. It 
was all very extraordinary, they declared, and they 
would rather not think about it. Some swore — 

u 'Twas strange — 't was passing strange." 



82 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

And others that — 

" 'Twas pitiful— 't was wondrous pitiful." 

A few, more sagacious than the rest, surmised that 
it savored of the black art ; and the ladies thought, 
indeed, that u the naughty man might have some- 
thing to do with it." One or two confessed that they 
were too old for the introduction of new ideas into 
their brains, — and I fully believed them when they 
said so. More distant acquaintances listened to my 
story with a look of polite incredulity ; — others 
yawned. 

The practice of the Baron Dupotet, and the ef- 
forts of Mr. Mayo and Dr. Lardner in promulgating 
Dr. Elliotson's experiments, had not yet familiarized 
the London world with, at least, the name of mes- 
merism ; — so, in the great thinking, unthinking me- 
tropolis, I met with scarce any disciples of the new 
creed. The only experiment, therefore, which I had 
any opportunity of making was upon a young cousin 
of my own, — a lad of about fifteen. He, however, 
proved at that time insensible to the mesmeric influ- 
ence ; but he took an interest in the subject of mes- 
merism, and actually tried to mesmerize a younger 
brother of his, who was not more than twelve years 
old. The results of his attempt are sufiicientlv cu- 
rious to tempt me to swerve from my usual rule of 
only recording that which I have personally observed. 
Besides, the actors in the little drama are so well 
known to me, that it almost appears as if I had been 
eye-witness to the scene, the circumstances of which 
were related to me by the mother of the two boys. 









MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 83 

The elder, in her presence, sat down, partly in 
joke, to mesmerise his brother, who was wholly ig- 
norant of the process and effects of mesmerism ; 
and, taking the hands of his patient, went through 
the forms of which he had seen me make use when 
mesmerising. Be it remarked that the time was 
middav, when the light, the noise in the streets, and 
the natural liveliness of youth, would particularly in- 
dispose a boy to slumber. Nevertheless, in about 
ten minutes, a manifest effect was produced. The 
patient's eyes closed as by a spell, and his head fol- 
lowed the mesmeriser's hand in the usual manner. 
Charles, the elder brother, now got up from his chair, 
when Edward rose also. The former raised his right 
arm; the latter immediately raised his; — his left 
arm — the same result. Charles walked forward — 
Edward advanced also. Charles stopped, and Ed- 
ward stood still on the instant ; — in short, all the 
gestures of the one were faithfully imitated by the 
other. But the mother became now alarmed, and 
insisted upon the young mesmeriser awaking his pa- 
tient. This was soon effected, and Edward, open- 
ing his eyes, and staring about like one just startled 
from slumber, expressed the greatest astonishment at 
finding himself standing in the middle of the room, 
declaring, at the same time, that his unconsciousness 
had been complete. 

In one point of view the above relation lays claim 
to a peculiar interest. The effects of a new influ- 
ence, when manifested by the young, are especially 
to be relied upon ; they can be neither prompted nor 
impeded by those prepossessions which are the growth 



84 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

of maturer years : nor can they be attributed to those 
nervous imaginings which spring from infirmity. 
Youth, moreover, is the season of candor, when all 
is bold, healthy, unsophisticated ; and the phenom- 
ena which it exhibits are valuable in proportion as 
they are exempt from the suspicion which attaches 
to the doings of the older inhabitants of this crafty 
world. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 85 



SECTION II. 

SHOWING THE CLAIMS OF MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING TO 
BE CONSIDERED A PECULIAR CONDITION OF MAN. 

In the spring of 1837, I went to Cambridge, on a 
visit to some friends. That I should have succeeded 
in interesting them, and others of the University, 
upon the subject nearest my thoughts, will not sur- 
prise those who have observed that, where science is 
most studied, new statements respecting natural phe- 
nomena obtain the most patient bearing. 1 did, in 
fact, at Cambridge, meet with many persons really 
desirous of witnessing experiments in mesmerism. 
and even of submitting themselves to the mesmeric 
influence. 

CASE in. 

In my first essay of mesmerism, at Cambridge, I ex- 
perimented — before seven or eight persons — upon 
a servant, whom I had brought from Belgium, a man of 
about twenty-seven years of age, in good health, lively 
and quick-tempered ; able also to speak English. I 
had attempted to mesmerise him once before, but, at 
that time, he had advanced no further than imperfect 
sleepwaking, during which he retained his conscious- 
ness, but could neither move nor open his eyes. On 
the present occasion, after a quarter of an hour's 
mesmerisation, he closed his eyes, but seemed restless, 

8 



86 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

and, in answer to a question I made him, declared 
that it was impossible for him to sleep on account of 
noises in the street and the constraint caused by the 
presence of so many persons. Scarcely, however, had 
he said this, when I perceived that his head followed 
my hand ; and, continuing the mesmeric passes for 
about five minutes more, I again asked him if he 
felt disposed to sleep. To my surprise, (for I had 
not expected a perfect result so soon) he replied, — 
" I am asleep." " Can you rise from your chair r H 
I inquired. " Yes ? but I had rather stay quiet. ' ? 
When, however, I got up and removed to a short 
distance from the patient, he also rose and moved a 
step or two towards me, but tottered and would have 
fallen, had I not hastened to his assistance. He 
leaned heavily against rne, and seemed unable to 
stand without my support ; I therefore placed him 
in a chair, when he complained of a pain at the 
chest, and begged me earnestly to wake him. " Can 
you not awake of yourself ? " I asked ; to which 
he replied, " By no means — but I beg of you to 
awake me." Reluctant to do so without exhibiting 
to the party present some of the marked phenomena 
of mesmerism, I soothed my patient as well as I could, 
and persuaded him to remain a little while longer in 
the state of sleepwaking. As he, however, mani- 
festly suffered, I was unwilling to fatigue him by 
many experiments. The following were the princi- 
pal : — wine, water, and coffee were handed to me, 
and I tasted them, successively, in such a way as to 
prevent the patient from perceiving, by any usual 
means, what the liquids were. He, however, cor- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 87 

rectly named them in their order. The order was 
then changed, and the results of the experiment were 
the same. 

Flowers were given me to smell : I was holding 
the patient by one hand, at the time, but turning 
altogether away from him to a table, over which I 
bent, so as to interpose myself between him and any 
thing that might be handed to me. He, however, 
when I smelt to the flowers, imitated the action, and 
on my asking him what he perceived, replied, without 
hesitation, " flowers." Upon this, one of the party 
silently changed the flowers for a bottle of can de 
cologne, when he observed, " That is not the same 
smell; it is eon de cologne" With the manner of 
conducting this experiment, and it> results, all who 
were present declared themselves perfectly satisfied. 

The patient, on being awakened, declared that he 
remembered nothing of what had pa8Sed sinee the 
moment when he complained of the noise in the 
street. His mesmeric sleepwaking had been com- 
plete. 

CASE IV. 

T. B.j an undergraduate of Trinity College, con- 
sented to try how far I could influence him mes- 
merically. He possessed abilities of no common or- 
der, was extremely lively, by no means of a wonder- 
seeking nature, and altogether seemed the last per- 
son in the world who could be worked upon by ner- 
vous apprehensions. He sat down to be mesmer- 
ised, laughingly, and with perfect calmness. In about 
tan minutes his eyelids drooped, and closed gradually ; 



88 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

his head followed my hand ; his features became 
fixed and rigid ; his color fled, and a dead stillness 
came over his countenance : the change was the 
more striking on account of the usually animated and 
mobile character of his physiognomy. It painfully 
resembled the alteration caused by death. Never- 
theless, on being interrogated as to his state, he de- 
clared that he was well, with the exception of a slight 
pain in the back of his head, ] which was shortly re- 
lieved by the mesmeric passes. To other questions 
he replied that he did not sleep, but was unable to 
move, or to open his eyes. As, after long mesmer- 
isation, I saw no probability of his advancing further 
into sleepwaking, I awoke him in the usual manner, 
when his countenance resumed its accustomed ex- 
pression. On attempting, however, to rise, he com- 
plained of feeling extremely weak and dizzy, and. for 
a short time, he was unable to stand with any firm- 
ness. He was convinced that he had experienced 
the effects of an influence independent of the ima- 
gination. 

case v. 

C. M., a bachelor of Trinity, aged about twenty- 
five, submitted to be mesmerised ; lie was clever, 
thoughtful, and rather grave in character. On first 
sitting down, he seemed very wakeful, and declared 
that it would be strange, if, under circumstances the 
most unfavorable to sleep, he could be charmed into 
any thing like drowsiness. In about a quarter of an 

1 See Case ii. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 89 

hour, during which a perfect silence was by no means 
observed, some force seemed to close his eyes as ir- 
resistibly as if they had been touched by Mercury's 
wand of slumbrous notoriety, and he passed into a 
state of imperfect sleepwaking, in which his h^ad 
followed my hand and he answered my questions. 
On my removing to a short distance from him, he 
leant forward towards me, and would have fallen, 
had I not resumed my former position. I awoke 
him in about half an hour ; he had not been in any 
wav, unpleasantly affected, and retained a vague re- 
collection of an agreeable state of reverie, similar to 
that which precedes slumber. 

C VSK VI. 

On this occasion sonic ten or twelve persons were 
assembled to witness my experiments ; and amongst 
them was a man of luminous intellect and varied ac- 
quirements, whom I was naturally desirous of inter- 
esting in the question of mesmerism. He was de- 
cidedly skeptical on the subject, but I knew that his 
was a mind which, if once fairly convinced, would 
be firmest in faith and foremost in investigation. I 
was therefore vexed when, after long inesmerisation, 
my servant, whom, from his having once passed into 
perfect sleepwaking, I had chosen as the subject of 
our experiments, remained uninfluenced. Two or 
three of the party, tired of waiting for a result that 
came not, went away, and the person whom I was 
chiefly anxious to convince, and whom I will call 

V , having an engagement, was about to follow 

their example, when I urged him to stay a very short 
8* 



90 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

*» 

time longer, while I tried another patient, D. C, an 
undergraduate of Trinity, who wished, as he said, to 
try the effects of mesmerism, in order to prove their 
nothingness. After this, I need not add that he was 
very incredulous on the subject ; every circumstance 
seemed to diminish the probability of my success. 
The man I had agreed to mesmerise was in the 
strength of three and twenty years of age, six feet 
in height, and muscular in proportion. The stillness 
of the meeting, once broken, could not be restored. 
Persons were talking, and moving about the room, 
and my recent failure had thrown an air of ridicule 
about the proceedings of the evening, which, if the 
mesmeric influence were dependent on imagination, 
would have been sufficient to annihilate it at once. 
V looked hopeless of seeing any thing remark- 
able, and had taken up a book. 

The following facts then occurred : — 
I had not held the hands of D. C. more than five 
minutes, when I remarked a dizzy look about his 
eyes, which is peculiarly indicative of the incipient 
stage of mesmeric sleepwaking. Encouraged by this 
success, I had recourse to the mesmeric passes, when 
by degrees the eyes of the patient closed, and shortly 
after the head followed every motion of my hand. 

V , at this moment looking up from his book, 

was surprised to see what had been effected. I beck- 
oned him to come near, and, by reiterated trials, 
convinced him that my hand had an attractive power 
over the patient. 

I now spoke to D. C, and asked him if he wore 
asleep; to which he replied, -Not precisely.' 3 I 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 91 

then, at V 's request said, " How do you feel ?" 

" Very strangely," he said, " as I never felt before." 
Shortly afterwards, V himself spoke to the pa- 
tient, and I called him by his name, but he seemed 
to pay no attention to the circumstance. When 

V happened to lay his hand upon his shoulder, 

the effect of the touch was like that of an electric 
shock. The patient's whole body quivered, his fea- 
tures were convulsed, his countenance became deadly 
pale, and he seemed to gasp for breath, like a person 
who has been suddenly immersed in cold water. 
Nevertheless, he did not awake, and the affection, 
whatever it was, seemed entirely physical (as if his 
mind had no longer its usual partnership with the 
body.) Hfe himself appeared to be unaware of it ; 
and, when I asked him what had disturbed him — 
what was the matter with him, lie said that lie felt 
nothing whatever. Still, however, he continued to 
tremble, until by the application of my hand to his 
forehead, and by mesmeric passes from the head 

downwards, I restored him to tranquillity. V , 

whom, since he touched him, the patient seemed to 
hear equally with myself, now recommenced speak- 
ing, and asked D. C. if he knew him. He replied 
in the affirmative, and named him. " Dou you see 

at all ?" V inquired. " Not much ; I see a red 

light about so large ;" and D. C. made a circular 
motion with his hands to express the size of the light. 
I then asked him, " Do you see me ?" to which he 
answered, " Yes, I see you always." " Well," I 
said, " I wish you now to get up from your chair." 
" Oh no, no ! I prefer staying where I am ; but you 



92 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

must stay with me." u No !" I replied, " I am 
going :" whereupon, he seized both my hands, and 
exclaimed, " You must, on no account, leave me." 
I, however, rose up, when the patient also rose ; I 
walked forward, and he walked also, but unsteadily, 
and leaning upon me. As he seemed to dislike 
remaining in an upright position, I placed him in a 
chair in a part of the room opposite to where he had 

been. I then proceeded to show V some of the 

characteristic phenomena of mesmerism. I drank 
wine, water, coffee, with the usual precautions, and 
the patient distinguished them all, going through the 
motions of tasting simultaneously with myself. There 
were various articles of food upon the table, amongst 
others some sandwiches. These last were given me, 
and he said directly, "You are eating sandwich." 
This may seem strange — it is so to myself ; but I 
state the fact as it occurred. Some snuff that I took 
from the chimney-piece behind me, turning my back, 
and suppressing, as much as possible, the usual indi- 
cations of smelling, was named directly ; this being 
exchanged for flowers, the result was equally satis- 
factory. 

Remembering with what acuteness of perception 

Mademoiselle M had distinguished between 

objects that did or did not belong to her mesmerist, 
I asked for the pocket-handkerchiefs of all the party, 
twisted up my own in the midst of them, and laid 
them on the knee of D. C. He was immediately 
affected with slight shuddering ; and tossed away 
very quickly all the pocket-handkerchiefs but mine. 
The experiment, repeated, gave the same result ; but 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 93 

the second time he grasped and firmly held my 
handkerchief, until the time of his awaking. 

At a yard's distance his hand rose up to meet 
mine, as iron flies to the magnet. From the ap- 
proach of other hands he recoiled. 

These experiments concluded, V said to me 

— "I am now satisfied that all you asserted to me 
respecting the mesmeric state is correctly true. I do 
not know that we are liable to elicit any new fact by 
keeping D. C. any longer asleep. He looks ill ^jid 
suffering, and I think you had better wake him." 

Upon this, I asked the patient if he desired to 
wake, and he replied " Yes ; I feel much fatigued." 

I awoke him, by the usual mesmeric passes, when 
he expressed the utmost astonishment at finding him- 
self in a different part of the room from that where 
he had first been mesmerised. The last half-hour 
had been a blank to him, with this single exception 

— he thought that he remembered hearing V 's 

voice, asking him if he knew him. Faithful, how- 
ever, to his character, he refused to believe that he 
had exhibited the phenomena to which we bore 
witness. 

The next day, as may be supposed, I talked over 
with V the circumstances of our mesmeric even- 
ing. I found him entirely persuaded that mesmeric 
sleepwaking was a distinct state, worthy to be inves- 
tigated as a part of man. His concluding words 
were these : — 

" I thank you for having enlarged my experience 
by facts perfectly new to it. I have seen a some- 
thing which is not sleep, which is not delirium, but a 



94 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

tertium quid, for which, as, yet, we have no accurate 
name. The thing is most interesting, but should, I 
see, be exercised with caution. The effect of my 
touching D. C. was fearful. You have verified many 
phenomena. It has occurred to me that you might 
try, when you have an opportunity, whether the sense 
of touch in the mesmerised sympathizes with that in 
the mesmeriser, as do the senses of smell and taste. 
Try whether, through you, the mesmerised person 
m^y have a cognizance of form — - whether he can 
ascertain, by means of your perceptions, if you are 
handling square objects or round — rough or smooth." 
To this suggestion I promised to attend. 

CASE VII. 

On this occasion my patient was G. T , aged 

19, the son of a gentleman at whose house in the 
country I spent a few days after quitting Cambridge. 
He was strong and healthy, and possessed good sound 
sense, with but a trifling infusion of imagination. 
After a quarter of an hour's mesmerisation he passed 
into imperfect sleepwaking, in which state his corpo- 
real powers were held in complete and singular en- 
thralment, while those of his mind remained unaltered. 
Unlike my other sleepwakers, he was utterly incapa- 
ble of speaking during the mesmeric trance, though 
as he told me subsequently, he heard every question 
I put to him, and was desirous of answering me. 
He was also unable to open his eyes, or to move, 
except so far as regarded the involuntary tendency 
of his head towards my hand. Another time, being 
curious to ascertain how far the influence (whatever 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 95 

it might be) which I exercised over the patient was 
dependent upon physical causes, I made the experi- 
ment of mesmerising him in the open air, on a fine 
June day. when the weather was warm, but refreshed 
by partial breezes. The following were the differ- 
ences between this mesmerisation and the last: — 

The patient did not close his eves so soon as on 
the preceding occasion, nor pass into the imperfect 
crisis by so regular a progression. 

In the beginning of his sleep, the power to move 
and to open his eyes seemed slightly restored when- 
ever the gust came by. 

He told me afterwards, that when I commenced 
mesmerism-, the action of the air produced a decided 
difference in his sensations. When the wind swept 
across his forehead it was. he said, as if there were a 
disturbance of some drowsy weight that was gather- 
ing over it. By degrees, however, he became insen- 
sible to this apparent remission of the sleeping influ- 
ence. Nothing, he declared, could be more singular 
than the feeling of utter inability to speak, move, or 
open his eyes. He heard me command him, urge 
him, in every way, to answer my questions, but his 
organs of speech seemed to be as completely paralyz- 
ed as those of vision. In fact, the only external 
indication that he had given of his desire to reply to 
me was the slightest possible motion of his lips. 

CASE VIII. 

The family with whom I was staying having but 
few prejudices on the subject of mesmerism, I was 
permitted — in consideration, I suppose, of my years 



96 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

and gravity — to mesmerise the sister of my preced- 
ing patient, a young lady of most amiable temper, 
cheerful, and by no means of a nervous temperament. 
Of the experiment to be tried she had no apprehen- 
sion, as she had already seen her brother support 
mesmerisation without injury ; and it should be espe- 
cially kept in mind that her ideas of the mesmeric 
state were limited to what she herself had witnessed 
of it ; for I had expressly abstained from describing 
the higher phenomena of sleepwaking to herself or to 
any member of her family, in order that their minds 
might be uninfluenced on the subject. Under these 
circumstances, to ascribe the curious results which I 
am about to detail to imagination or to imitation, 
would be absurd. 

I sat down to mesmerise my patient about nine 
o'clock in the evening. In about seven minutes her 
eyes closed, and in three minutes more her head 
followed my hand. I asked several times, " Do you 
sleep ? " but no answer was given, and I began to 
fear that this incapacity of speech under mesmerism 
was a family failing. At length, however, on a repe- 
tition of my question, Miss T answered in a very 

low voice, " Yes." From this time she replied to all 
I said, and displayed the higher characteristics of 
mesmeric sleepwaking in a pefection which I never 
saw evinced upon a first essay. The effects of mes- 
merisation upon the patient seemed to be altogether 
of an agreeable nature. She felt no pain of any 
kind, and her color did not vary, or, if any thing, 
was slightly heightened. Her appearance only dif- 
fered from the natural in these respects ; — her eyes 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 97 

were entirely closed, and her head, drooping as if 
with the heaviness of slumber, swayed dizzily from 
side to side, except when I strongly commanded her 
attention, and desired her to raise her head, at which 
times she seemed with an effort to resume the power 
over her organization. In this state, the phenomena 
manifested by Miss T may he ranged under the 

llSUal head-, a- follows : — 

l-t. Attraction towards tin mesmeriser. — Though 
indisposed at fir8t 3 like other- in the mesmeric sleep, 

to motion. Miss T . when 1 arose from my chair, 

rose also. Without touching her. I mOved onwards, 
and she seemed Compelled to follow me. At one 
time 1 ran quickly to a distance from her, when she 
remained standing where 1 had left her. but bent 
towards me. and wavered as if -he would fall. I 

made a motion with my Bimfl a- if I would draw her 

tome. when, recovering herself^ she -lowly, and as it 
were reluctantly, came to where I stood. 

When her hands were lying <»n her lap. if I held 
mine above them they were attracted upward, more 
quickly as they drew Q< arer my own. It was much 
like the effect which a piece of rubbed sealing-wax 
has on a bit of paper. In proportion to the attrac- 
tion towards her mesmerisei seemed the patient's 
repulsion from others. If any but myself presented 
their hands to her. she drew back her own with a 
slow but singularly repugnant shrinking, her fingers 
becoming rigid and curved inwards. This experi- 
ment was often repeated with the same results. Re- 
membering how painfully one of my patients had been 
affected by an unadvised touch, I was careful not to 



98 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

allow any one to come into actual contact with Miss 

T ; until I had established what mesmerisers call 

a " rapport " between the parties, and which is 
effected by the mesmeriser taking, at the same mo- 
ment, the patient's hand and that of a third person, 

2dly. Community of sensation with the mesmeriser. — 
Wine, water, and a stand of liqueurs were on a side 
table. Placing the patient as far from me as was 
consistent with my still touching her hand, turning 
also away from her, I tasted alternately water and 
wine, between which she distinguished correctly, 
moving her lips as if she herself were drinking. 
Some brandy and water, already mixed, was in a 
tumbler on the table ; for this I suddenly changed 
the first-mentioned liquids, when the moment I had 
taken it into my mouth the patient made wry faces, 
and exclaimed, " Nasty, nasty." " Why do not you 
like it?" I asked. " Because it is too strong." 
" Have you ever tasted it before ? " " Yes, once, 
when I had a sore throat." " You know then what 
it is ? " Yes ; it is brandy and water." 

A member of the party gave me, from behind, 
some wild flowers, which the young people had 
gathered that day. " Do you know what I am smel- 
ling ? " I inquired. " Something that comes from 
the fields," was the reply. 

The flowers were silently changed for snuff, when 
the patient again exhibited symptoms of dislike. On 
being asked the reason, she said, "I smell tobacco." 

It now occurred to me to try the experiment 
which V had suggested with respect to the cog- 
nizance of form. With every precaution, I took up 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 99 

from a table, on which were many other articles, a 
small square box, and passed my finger over the 
edges; I, at the same time, asked the patient, "Can 
you tell me what sort of thing I am touching?" 

Upon this Misa T made motions with her fingers, 

as if she had the object under her own hand, and 
replied. *-It is something with edges, like a box." 
I next took into my hand a chess-man, some parts of 

which were carved in points, and fell alternately the 

carved and uncarved portions of the piece. Between 
these she discriminated correct]), saying, "Now it 
feels rough ; now smooth ; " and always before speak- 
in- she went through the same motion* of touching 
with myself. 

One of the patient's sisters, without giving notice 
of her intention, went out of the room and fetched 

an egg, which she concealed can-fully in her hand 
and gave me from behind. The patient now said, " I 
feel something smooth and round*" Being urged to 

tell what it was. she said. " I think it i< a ball.' 1 
Stretching out my hand behind me, I whispered to 

one of the party, to hurt me in some way; I was 
pricked with a pin, when my patient started and 
shook her hand as it' she felt the injury. On being 
asked what she felt, she answered, " As if they 
pricked my hand." 

At another time, w lien I inquired if she suffered 
in any way. six* replied, " No, only my feet are very 
cold/' My own feet being exceedingly cold at the 
moment, I suspected that her feeling was sympa- 
thetic : I conjectured rightly, for, awaking soon after, 
she assured me that her feet were perfectly warm. 



100 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

3dly. Isolation from every one hut the rnesmeriser. — 
Even after having been placed "en rapport" with 
all present, the patient seemed incapable of hearing 
any voice but mine, unless the person who spoke 
were in actual contact with me and with herself at 
the same time. On one occasion, when I was asking 
her if she knew what some object was that I held 
before her, her father told her very loudly that it was 
a wine-glass (which it actually was), but the patient 
did not profit by the intelligence, for on being again 
questioned she said impatiently, " I do not know ; 
I cannot tell." Her name shouted close to her ear 
by different members of her family seemed to make 
no impression whatever upon her organs of hearing ; 
— while, on the contrary, she attended to the slightest 
word that I addressed to her. 

4thly. Development of vision. — The patient's i 
were, to all appearance, firmly shut during the whole 
period of the mesmeric sleep. When I first asked 
her if she saw any thing, she answered in the 
negative ; but added, after a pause, " I see yew." 
After this, she seemed by degrees to acquire a more 
general vision. She recognised, on being led up to 
them, the several members of her family, consisting 
of nine persons, and could not be deceived by any 
change in their position. At length, I held a book 
before her on a level with her eyes, when she. with- 
out hesitation named what the object was. Upon 
this I opened the book at the title-page, and pressed 
her to try if she could distinguish any words. She 
at first begged me not to trouble her to do this ; but 
at length, as if making a great effort, she made out 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKINC 101 

the word ••London/* ;it the bottom of the page. 
This \\a> the first time I had seen any sleepwaker 
read any written of printed word. The experiment, 
however, though curious, was not strictly enough 
conducted to serve as the basis of any theory on the 
mysterious subject of radon through the closed lids. 
The book, at the moment when the word was dis- 
tinguished, was resting noon the patient's lap. below 
the level of hei eyes. Those, however, who wore 
observant of the circumstance, could detect not the 
smallest opening of the eyelids. 

Holding my watch before the patient, in the usual 
line of vision, I asked her the hour, when she cor«« 
recti] told that it was five minutes to eleven. 

Directly after this last experiment, I awoke my 
patient, who testified great surprise at finding herself 
on a chair instead of the sofa, where she last re- 
membered to have hem seated. Mr. T now 

came up to her and said, •• II . do ypo know 

what o'clock it is.?" to which she replied. ••! sup- 
pose about ten, or perhaps half-past nine. I am sine 

I cannot tell." Mr. T , then said, M Why. it is 

not five minutes since yon told us the hour/' Upon 
this Miss T seemed much astonished, but de- 
clared her utter ignorance of the circumstance, and 
indeed of all that had occurred during her sleepwalk- 
ing. The last thing which she recollected was hear- 
ing me ask whether she slept, when she desired to 
answer me but could not. A moment after, she be- 
came unconscious. Her feelings after the mesmer- 
isation was over were those of pleasurable excite- 
ment and she felt none of the heaviness which some- 



102 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

times succeeds sleepwaking. The next morning she 
declared that she had not been able to close her eyes 
all night, but had felt no want of sleep, nor subse- 
quently did she experience any of the lassitude usu- 
ally resulting from a wakeful night. 

On a second mesmerisation Miss T confirmed 

by repetition the results of most of the preceding 
experiments. A cambric pocket-handkerchief tied 
over her eyes made no difference whatever in her 
powers of vision. She did not even seem to be aware 
when I put on the bandage, or when I took it off. 
While bandaged, she read the words u Edinburgh 
Guide," and " Travels in Russia," from the title-pages 
of two books, which I took up at random from amongst 
others lying about the room, and held before her, in 
about the usual position a person holds a book in 
reading. The effort to distinguish these words seemed 

to be great, and subsequently Miss T refused to 

make any more exertions. I urged her to look at 
my watch, but she remained silent, and soon after 
large tears forced their way through her closed lids. 
Having tranquillized my patient by such motions of 
the hands as I have ever found beneficial and sooth- 
ing to mesmerised persons, I awoke her, when she at 
once resumed her cheerfulness, and began laughingly 
to ask her sisters what she had been doing, and how 
long she had slept. She was not in the least aware 
that she had been crying, and I begged that she might 
not be told of it. 

I might here, perhaps, close my series of proofs 
relating to mesmeric sleepwaking and its phenomena ; 
but, as regards this argument, numbers are strength. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIXG. 103 

and each additional instance of the mesmeric sleep, 
accompanied by the -nine characteristics; is a step 
towards that firm and decisive,* conclusion on the sub- 
ject, which can only be attained, on any. by a repe- 
tition of the same fact under the same circumstances. 
At the risk, therefore, of wearying my readers, I add 
the following cases, which occurred after 1 bad re- 
turned to the Continent in 1831 : — 

9E i\. 

J. G , of Antwerp, aged twenty-two, not very 

strong, but having no particular ailment, was brought 
by me into imperfect mesmeric sleepwaking. His 

head followed my hand, and he was unable to move 

or open hi- eyes, though he replied to my questions. 
II* fell a drowsiness dtiring the whole <»t the day 
succeeding to the mesmerisation. 

( LSI 

W , of Aix-la-Chapelle, aged fort} -five, in 

delicate health, of a calm, reflective mind, and skep- 
tical as well as uninformed on the subject of mes- 
merism, was thrown into perfect sleepwaking at the 
first Bitting. He displayed the usual characteristics 

of the state. There were ctocumstancea relating to 

this patient which I shall have occasion hereafter to 
detail, and which are therefore omitted here. 

CASE XI. 

T. B , (English) aged nine, an extremely lively 

boy, and full of the restlessness natural to his age, 
consented to be mesmerised, but observed that he 



104 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

thought he never should be able to sit still while I 
tried my experiments. Notwithstanding this, and 
the time of day (two o'clock), his eyes closed after 
about ten minutes' mesmerisation, and shortly after 
he gave every token of having passed into perfect 
sleepwaking. He answered all my questions, heard 
no other voice than mine, was attracted towards me 
in the usual manner, and, with his eyes to all appear- 
ance shut, saw me, and indicated the position of my 
hands and the number of fingers which I held up 
before him. In about half an hour he begged me to 
awake him, and, on returning to the natural state, 
declared that his unconsciousness had been complete. 

CASE XII. 

Mrs. O , a married English lady, clever and 

firm-minded, was thrown by me into imperfect sleep- 
waking in about a quarter of an hour. In this state 
her countenance was pale, her head moved towards 
my hand involuntarily, and she was unable to get 
up, or to open her eyes, until I had de-mesmerised 
her. 

CASE XIII. 

R. V , a young Belgian, of the medical pro- 
fession, was so far susceptible of the effects of mes- 
merism as to display the usual symptoms of imper- 
fect sleepwaking. Having an engagement on the 
evening that he was mesmerised, and rather ashamed 
of having slept, he hurried away before the mesmeric 
drowsiness had been entirely dispersed. The conse- 
quence was that he nearly fell down in the street, 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIXG. 105 

and was obliged to have recourse to the support of a 
fellow student. On the following day. he still felt a 
confusion in his head. This is not the only occasion 
on which 1 have remarked that the sensations which 
attend and follow an imperfect crisis are l>y no means 

so agreeable as those which result from complete 
deepwaking. In the oik- case, there is an apparent 
disturbance of the system, accompanied by feelings 
of drowsiness and fatigue — in the other, the frame 
ii- to he invigorated, and a wakefulness and vi- 
vacity are the after Bymptoms. 

CAST. \i\. 

At the time when this occurred, F was staying at 

a country house in Switzerland, and my friends, the 

intess <>f and Lord were passings few 

days al the town which was nearest our residence. 
Having heard from me some interesting details re- 
specting mesmerism, they were desirous of \\ itnesding 

it- phenomena: but, ;i- no patient was forthcoming, 
it seemed unlikely that the wishes of my noble friends 

would he gratified. However, late one evening, the 

Countess sent her carriage and a note, pressing me 
to come to her immediately, a- she had met with 
some friends, amongst whom I should find one at 
least willing to be m ismerised. On arriving at the 

town of I was introduced, for the hist time, to 

a most agreeable English family, the friends of whom 
the Countess had spoken ; and after some conversa- 
tion, in the course of which I ascertained that the 
newly-arrived visiters had but a very vague notion of 
what they were to witness or to experience, it was 



106 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

decided that I should mesmerise Miss , a young 

lady, who might have seen some eighteen summers, 
of a lively disposition, and not in the least timid or 
nervous with regard to the experiment about to be 

made. Lady took down a kind of proces verbal 

during the proceedings of the evening, and from this 
I extract the following details : 

" Mr. T began to mesmerise Miss at 

ten o'clock. Five minutes after her eyes closed, 
her head followed the mesmeriser's hand wherever 
he moved it. The mesmeriser then asked — 

Are you asleep ? 

Patient. — No ; I am not asleep. 

Mesmeriser. — Do you like being mesmerised ? 

P. — No. (On repetition) Yes. 

The apparently mesmerised person here started 
from her seat, opened her eyes, and said. " I 'm not 
in the least mesmerised." All present thought she 
had been feigning, and were preparing to join in a 
laugh against the mesmeriser, when, to the surprise 
of every one, the patient fell back into her chair, her 
eyes at the same time closing with a sleepy expres- 
sion. The mesmeriser continued his passes. The 
head, as before, followed the hand. 

The mesmeriser then said — - 

Do you feel sleepy ? 

P. — Yes. 

M. — Why then do not you sleep ? 

P. — I do. 

M. — Are you quite asleep ? 

The mesmeriser here drank some wine, turning 
his head away, and asked — 



a 






MESMERIC SLEET WAKING. 107 

Do you taste any thing? 

P. — No, but I snail wine. (The wine was. how- 
ever, too tar off from the patient to have been distin- 
guished by her. in any way. under ordinary circum- 
stances.) 

M. — Do you know where inv hand is : 

P. — (her hand going duvcilv to where the mes- 

meriser's was | JTes. 

M. — I 'an \ <»u see me ? 

I\ — Yes, but not very distinctly. (Her eyes ap- 
peared to be closely shut*) 

M. — (smelling to a oosegay which he took from 

the table) What is this? 

P. — Flowers. 

The mesmeriser now urged the patient to rise from 
her chair, but she expressed the strongest reluctance 
to move : at the same time she Untreated the mes- 
merise? not to teave ber. He, howevef, went to a 

little distance, when Miss seemed to be forced 

to get up and follow him. Supported by the mes- 
meriser, she walked balf across the room, but begged 
that she might be permitted to sit down again. The 
mesmeriser then placed her in a chair in the middle 
of the apartment, and held up various objects (not 

belonging to him) before her eyes. These die de- 
clared she could not ><•<•. but whenever the mesmi ri- 
ser held before her any thing which belonged to him- 
self, she named the object directly. In this way she 
told rightly when the mesmeriser successively pre- 
sented his pocket-handkerchief, purse, and watch, 
also a letter which he took from his pocket. On 
being asked if she could distinguish the hour on the 



108 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

mesmeriser's watch, she held it before her closed 
eyes, and said, " It is a quarter to something." In 
effect it was a quarter to eleven. 

The mesmeriser now asked — 

What am I now tasting ? 

P. — (seeming to swallow something.) Cold water. 
(Right.) 

M. — What am I eating ? 

P. — (seeming also to eat) Something like bread, 
but sweeter. (It was cake.) 

M. — Do you like it? 

P. — Yes. 

M. — What am I smelling ? 

P. — Eau de Cologne. (Right.) 

Miss 's father and mother now approached 

her, and would have taken her hand, but she drew it 
back with a shudder. To the mesmeriser's hand, on 
the contrary, her own seemed always attracted, and 
rose up to meet it when held at a considerable dis- 
tance. She distinguished between her father's and 
the mesmeriser's handkerchiefs, by throwing the 
former away, and retaining the latter in her posses- 
sion. She also refused to part with a small piece of 
coin on which the mesmeriser had breathed, and 
which she held fast grasped in her hand. 

The patient being now asked if she was tired, repli- 
ed that she did indeed feel much fatigued, and seem- 
ed pleased to rest her head, leaning forward, upon 
the mesmeriser's hand : at this moment she seemed 
to sleep very deeply. Her countenance was ex- 
tremely pale. She seemed to hear no one speak but 
the mesmeriser, but always answered his questions. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 109 

On his asking if she felt well and comfortable, she 
replied. -Oh, so comfortable! " nevertheless the 

position of the patient, as she bent forward, with her 
Deck stretched out, was the most uneasy that could 

well be imagined. 

M. — Would you not be more at your ease on the 

B ? 

I\ — ( )li DO ! 1 am BO WeH here ! but you are not 

going awaj 1 

The mesmeriser hew rose and went to the sofa, 
when Miss seemed obliged to do bo likewise. 

M. — Are you not better here 

l\ — Yes. so — Bitting quiet 

The me8meriser no*i asked hi- patient if she 
would awake, but >\\r Baid she would rather remain 
oua she was, and begged of him to allow her to deep 
some time longer. At length, however, th< i mesmer- 
iser said, " 1 must wake you," and passed his hands 

rapidly over the patient- eye8, when they partially 

opened, but she shut them again directly, exclaim- 
ing, u I had rather sleep." The inesmeriser however 
continued to use the same motions as before, when 

the patient again opened her eyes, and to the question 
" Are you quite awak :" answered in the affirma- 
tive. She then looked about with an air of Surprise 

and asked how she cam* to be sitting on the sofa i 

Then she laid up her hand, which still remained 
closed upon the piece of money that the mesmeriser 
had <ii\.ai her, and exclaimed, " What is this?'' 
When it was explained to her that she had refused to 
part with the coin, she seemed much surprised, and, 
when informed of all that had passed, would scarcely 
10 



110 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

believe what we told her. The only circumstance 
that she remembered of her sleepwaking w r as having 
seen, at the moment when her eyes w 7 ere partly open, 

the upper part of Lady S 's face. She declared 

the only disagreeable thing in mesmerism was the 
awaking, and compared it to what she should imagine 
of the feelings of a drowned person in returning to 
life." 

Fearing lest my reader should now exclaim with 
Macbeth — 

" What ! will the line stretch out to the crack 
Of doom ? I '11 see no more ! " — 

I here close my detailed cases of mesmeric sleep- 
waking, merely stating in conclusion that, in addition 
to those already particularized, I have mesmerised, 
between January 1837, and December 1838, nine 
other individuals, seven of whom passed into the 
perfect, and two into the imperfect crisis. These all 
displayed phenomena coincident with the above, 
though in some cases higher and more interesting in 
their degree of development. Of course as I pro- 
ceeded in my career of investigation, my views 
cleared, and my experiments became extended. It 
was impossible to be so long conversant with one set 
of facts without hazarding some conjectures as to 
their efficient causes. I theorized, and endeavored to 
prove or disprove the theories that I constructed by 
bringing them to the test of actual experiment. How 
far I succeeded in this labor it is my intention to re- 
late hereafter. My intention, up to this point, has 
simply been to answer the objections raised against 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. Ill 

mesmerism on account of its limited manifestation, 
and variable as well as hypochondriac character. I 
have wished to show that mesmeric sleepwaking is a 
state, and a peculiar state into which man gene- 
rally has the capacity <>f passing; and surely I have 
said enough to remove from it the reproach of being 
limited to a few nervous and fanciful persons, chiefly 
of the weaker sex. ( hit of three and twenty indi- 
viduals in whom 1 induced deepwaking, more or 
less perfectly, six only were women, one only a de- 
cided invalid. Let me, however, hasten to anticipate 
an objection which may have been forming in my 
reader's mind. 1 ought, it may be Urged, to have 
noticed my casefl of failure as well as of success. 

This objection shall not long be valid — I have 

already Stated that a COUSin of mine could not he in- 
fluenced by me mesmerically. The trial was how- 
ever scarcely serious or protracted enough to be 
considered as decisive one way ot the other. At 
Cambridge two persons experienced no effects from 
me-merisation. The one was determined to resist 
the influence, and to that end was solving an abstruse 
mathematical problem all the time that I was mes- 
merising him, The other disliked being mesmerised 
and was afraid of it j — and fear I have always found 
to be in mesmerism a most disturbing force. Sub- 
sequently among those whom 1 have essayed to mes- 
merise, I have met with but four persons who mani- 
fested either no symptoms of being affected, or those 
so slight and equivocal that they may not be relied 
upon. Of these, two were ladies, who ought (accord- 
ing to the received notion of mesmerism) to have 



112 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

been more easily influenced than persons of the other 
sex, especially as they allowed me a fair and sufficient 
trial, while, on the contrary, the two other individuals 
alluded to jumped up from their seats after a mes- 
merisation of a few minutes, one of them exclaiming, 
" I feel nothing ; and now believe in mesmerism less 
than ever ! " 

However, allowing these cases to pass as absolute 
failures, it appears that in the space of less than two 
years, the number of persons mesmerised by one 
single individual was in the proportion of twenty- 
three to eight. Striking off even the imperfect cases, 
there will remain fourteen persons out of thirty-one 
in whom sleepwaking was fully developed with all its 
attendant train of characteristic phenomena, — these 
too, not being selected by myself as likely subjects 
for mesmerism, but offering themselves accidentally : 
and surely they who consider how difficult it is, first, 
to prevail on persons to submit to mesmerisation at 
all, and, secondly, to secure an adequate trial, will 
wonder that the cases are so many rather than so 
few. The great argument, therefore, against mes- 
merism, of infrequency and irregularity, falls to the 
ground. Nor can any one rationally demand a uni- 
versality of mesmeric sleepwaking, before he will ad- 
mit that it is one of the states into which man gene- 
rally has the capacity of passing. The exceptions 
forbid not the existence of the rule. All persons are 
not, it is to be hoped, mad ; yet we pronounce mad- 
ness to be an affliction to which any man whatever 
is liable. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 113 

H Perhaps some doctor of tremendous paunch, 
Burly and big — a black abyss of drink," — 

may see all his fellow topers under the table, himself 
sober the while : yet this by no means affects the 
proposition, that drunkenness is a state into which 
man generally has the capacity of passing. 

But there yet remain two important questions to 
ask and to answer, n ipecting the phenomena which 

I have detailed. 

1st. Have 1 been deceived J 

2d. Have 1 been mistaken ? 

The first implies that my patients feigned; the se- 
cond that in\ senses were incompetent to discern the 
objects presented to them. 

The wilful and determined opposers of mesmerism 
(carefully to be separated from the mass of honest 
objectors) are very ready, in judging of mesmeric state- 
ments, to have recourse to one or both of the above 
suppositions, not perceiving, that in so doing, they 
decide abstract questions which can never be limited 
to the single subject of mesmerism, but which bear 

largely upon the whole conduct of life. In their blind 

zeal to overthrow the particular object of their dislike, 
they would strike away universally the two great 
props of humanity, namely. — belief in our neighbor, 
whereby we greatly regulate the moral part of our 
nature; and confidence in the sufficiency of our 
senses, whereby alone we judge of any thing external 
to ourselves. Allow that a large proportion of per- 
sons deceive, (as we must do, if We suppose all whom 
we mesmerise to be feigning,) and what becomes of 
our faith in the founders of our holy religion, even 
10* 



114 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

in the credibility of human testimony on which we 
ground our present actions and our future hopes ? 
Again, grant that we are deluded by our senses to 
the extent we must be when we are mistaken in a 
multitude of cases, and what remains in the universe 
but dreams and uncertainties ? The splendid labors 
of Galileo and Herschel, based as they are on the 
competency of the human senses, are but as a vapor, 
and the discoveries of Newton, sublime as they ap- 
pear, must be as illusory as the organs through which 
they were transmitted. 

But it may be replied, — We are not to distrust 
our senses generally, but only in those particular 
cases when they appear to bear testimony incompat- 
ible with former experience. This manner of view- 
ing the question is plausible, and has accordingly 
been much adopted by those who would make short 
work of mesmerism and banish it a blow. On these 
grounds some have even gone so far as to say — 
Should we even see the imputed wonders of mesmer- 
ism with our own eyes, we should not credit our 
senses. Whether such determination be as wise as 
it is magnanimous, remains to be proved. There is 
unfortunately just that mixture of good in it which 
makes evil dangerous. Every reasonable man will 
grant that we should examine with becoming caution 
any appearances that may seem to contradict our 
former experience ; — but to reject, when we should 
only distrust — to be positive when we ought to be 
merely skeptical — is certainly not the part of reason. 
The mistake seems to have originated, as so many 
other misconceptions on important points have done, 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 115 

not so much in a false idea as in the misplacement 
of a truth — in taking that as a basis which is only 
superstructure. The maxim, " Doubt all that does 
not harmonize with previous knowledge," is just in 
itself, but, in this case, becomes, by its position, erro- 
neous. It is e\< -client as a monitor, but insufficient 
as a guide — an admirable servant, but a miserable 
master. Were the ultra ante-mesmerists consistent, 
and should they carry through their principle, what 
groundwork would they have for any belief whatso- 
ever ? I may be answered, "Experience!" Yes; 
but should it be forgotten that experience itself is the 
fruit of the senses ? What becomes of the product, 
if the parent itself be found so very fallible? If we 
grant that we are the fools erf our Bensei in oik 4 im- 
portant branch of their observation, why not in all? 
The absurdity is this : we arc to trust our general ex- 
perience, but allow that it may err in the particular, 
as if the general were not composed of the particular ! 
It is as if we were to talk of a good form of govern- 
ment under which every individual was grossly 
wronged. Now. trust in the testimony of our senses, 
or rather of our consciousness. i*> not only the ground- 
work of all we believe, but is the cement of each 
fact that makes up the whole fabric of our certain 
knowledge. Of the external world we can ascertain 
nothing but through the faculties by which we ob- 
serve it; and of the external world we can believe 
nothing but by our trust in the accuracy of those fa- 
culties — our organ of information is either competent 
or incompetent. If it be competent, there is no rea- 
son why we should distrust it, ceteris paribus, in one 



116 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

case more than another. If incompetent, there is no 
reason why we should trust it, cceteris paribus, at one 
time more than another. There is no alternative: 
either we must place confidence in our sole medium 
of knowl- dge, or take refuge in universal skepticism. 
Grant that every anomaly presented to us be a reason 
for temporary doubt ; still, when it is often enough 
presented to us, our doubts as to its existence cannot 
but cease. Allow that to accept facts on insufficient 
grounds is folly ; still, to reject them when properly 
demonstrated is equally absurd ; nay, the greater dan- 
ger waits upon unfounded hesitation. A too great 
rashness may correct itself; but distrust in the evi- 
dence of our senses is a radical defect, which, as it 
annihilates all things, so does it preclude the possi- 
bility of a remedy ; — not that any w r ise man would 
attempt to deny that, though our senses are compe- 
tent, we ourselves may be in fault ; and that, through 
a careless use of our means of knowledge, we may 
sometimes err in our estimate of things. But though 
this may happen once or twice, the most slovenly ob- 
server can scarcely be deceived as to the actuality of 
facts which occur before him again and again. 
Moreover, in witnessing aught so remarkable as an 
exhibition of the mesmeric phenomena, the gazer's 
mind is in the attitude of roused attention ; a state 
the most opposite imaginable to the careless mood, 
in which we are apt to be deceived. Thev who 
would represent mesmerism as the cheat of our own 
eyes should remember, that the worst mistakes of 
our senses are but transient, even momentary, and 
that their very errors tend to correct themselves. For 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 117 

instance, when alone in my apartment at the witching 
time of night, I may suppose I see a face gazing at 
me from out the window curtains. But my imme- 
diate impulse is to look again, and to bend a stricter 
scrutiny upon the delusive appearance, which I dis- 
cover forthwith to have arisen from certain fortuitous 
arrangements of light and shade. It might, indeed. 
have happened that, ov e rcome by sudden panic, I 

should have tied from the room, while still under a de- 
lusion, and have proclaimed ever after I had seen a 
ghost. But such conduct is. happily, the exception 

to, and not the rule of. that of mankind in general. 

Besides, there is plainly no analogy whatever be- 
tween a momentary and fear-engendered delusion 

of this sort, and a persistence in error, with regard to 
objects which we behold very frequently and in the 

calmest frame of mind. Other apparent inaccuracies 
there are in the action of the senses; but these are 

well known, and deceive no one: and exceptions, 

when known and invariable, become themselves a 
part of the original law from which they seem to 
deviate. Allowances are made lor them ; and on 
every subject to which they relate our judgments are 

quite as exact as if no such limitations were enjoin- 
ed. Thus, when we apparently see a Bash of light 
from bringing into contact zinc and silver in our 

mouths, we soon come to know that there is no such 
thing; and when a juggler by the rapidity of his 
movements bewilders our apprehension-, we admire 
his dexterity, but are not deceived by it in the least. 
But the phenomena of mesmerism come not within 
the category of these transient illusions. The pa- 



118 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

tients who exhibit them are not jugglers, but per- 
sons of good faith, unpractised in sleight of hand or 
dexterity of any kind. Even supposing them to be 
adepts in deception, they manifestly cannot play a 
part of which they know nothing ; and I have shown 
that those whom I have mesmerised were generally 
unaware what was to be felt or done in mesmeric 
sleepwaking. Am I to entertain a thought so mon- 
strous, as that a number of respectable individuals 
whom I casually met at different times and in dif- 
ferent places were united in a conspiracy to deceive 
me ? I cannot think so, even if I would. He, who 
observes a state frequently, attains at length to a cer- 
tain experience in its minute symptoms, which, like 
IthuriePs spear, detects falsehood at once. Now, in 
mesmerism, there are a thousand such trifling but 
decisive tests of authenticity. To instance only 
clockwork lowering of the eyelids, and the remark- 
able manner of their closing — it may be affirmed 
that these phenomena are not imitable ; for they are 
out of the reach of human muscular power, as long 
as it remains under its usual conditions. 

Perceiving, then, that imposition on the part of my 
mesmeric patients is not only in the highest degree 
unlikely, but actually impossible, and confiding in 
the testimony of my own senses, I am assured that I 
have witnessed a state of man which is peculiar and 
distinctive, 1st, as induced ; 2dly, as possessing its 
own characteristics when induced. 

Nor are these conclusions at all invalidated by the 
common argument so often adduced by the ante-mes- 
merists, that the whole of what are called the mes- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 119 

meric conditions are brought about through the 
agency of the patient's imagination, and are there- 
fore self-induced. This is plainly quibbling ; for, 
granting that imagination be the proximate cause, or 
immediate antecedent of mesmeric sleepwaking, still 
we require a moving cause, or a prior antecedent 
whereby the imagination itself La set in action ; and 
this moving cause is indisputably external, and to be 
referred to certain looks or gestures or mere prox- 
imity of the mesmeriser. Equally futile is the at- 
tempt to nullify the fact of external influence by as- 
sertions " that some individuals on whom the effects 
of mesmerism have repeatedly been produced may 
exhibit like effects, without being mesmerised afresh, 
provided they are led to believe that the process is 
carried on as usual and that they are under its in- 
fluence." This proves nothing more than the usual 
law of our nature, whereby trains of Bensations grow 
into habits, and occur in certain series when the idea 
that is linked with them can be raised in the mind. 
But then they must always owe their origin in the 
first place to some exciting cause, which remains the 
true basis of their production ; since but for it they 
would never have existed. Thus the peculiar sensa- 
tion called tickling was in the first instance made 
known to us through the contact of something exter- 
nal (it being a curious fact that no one can tickle 
himself so as to fall into that convulsive laughter 
which characterizes the sensation ;) yet if any one 
presents his finger to susceptible persons, as if with 
an intention of tickling, the feeling will be excited, 
and those on whom the experiment is tried will 



120 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

shrink and laugh, as if actually touched by the finger. 
The idea, then, of the primary cause of a sensation 
confessedly precedes the sensation itself ; and, when 
mesmeric patients obey this law, they appear to me, 
instead of disproving the influence which primarily 
affected them, to establish it altogether. In sup- 
posing the actions of the mesmeriser to be present, 
the patient owns them as the primary cause of his 
sensations ; and the reproduction of the accompany- 
ing phenomena, under certain convictions, is a per- 
petual recognition of that force which first set the 
hidden springs in play. 

In mesmerism, then, the influence of man is al- 
ways the proper antecedent; — the state of mesmeric 
sleepwaking the proper consequent. Will any one 
declare that external causes have nothing whatever 
to do with the production of the mesmeric state ? 
Yet this he must affirm before he can consistently 
class mesmerism with self-originating states of mind 
or body. 

In vain, therefore, is the mesmeric sleep likened 
to, or identified with, natural sleepwaking. hypo- 
chondriasis, catalepsy, &c, for it differs in one most 
important particular, from any of these states : it is 
consequent upon external influence ; it is induced, 
and that (whatever intermediate machinery may be 
set in motion) by the agency of man. We should 
consider also how utterly distinct from constitutional 
disorders like the above is mesmeric sleepwaking, 
which may be produced, almost at will, in all kinds 
of temperaments. Catalepsy, which it in some re- 
spects resembles, is a disease ; but the mesmeric 



j 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 121 

sleep is not a disease. Surely every event has its 
adequate cause, and, if mesmeric patients are not 
sleepwakers either from malady or by constitution, 
how ifl it that they become so? It has been shown 
that not only the healthy and the strong are suscep- 
tible of the memneric slumber, but individuals ad- 
vanced in life, who cannot be suj>po>ed to have that 
restlessness of the blood which sometimes atllicts 

younger persons with steepwaking. How then can 

we confound mesmeric with natural sleepwaking ? 
The causes which are explanatory of the one have 
nothing in common with the other. Besides, the 
sleepwaking we are considering is guided and wield- 
ed by external agency ; — and this alone, exclusive 
of other considerations winch we have before sug- 
itedj is a sufficient answer to those who allege that 

the so-called iiicsiiii lie State can be produced apart 

from the mesmeriser; since, when genuine, k pre- 
supposes the exhibition of phenomena that spring 
from the mesmeriser** actual presence. 

Another fliatingiiighing feature of mesmeric sleep- 
waking which stamps it with an individuality the 
most remarkable, is (as far as my own observation of 
the state extends) the extreme clearness and truth of 
its perceptions. Mesmeric patients act upon real 
impressions, and in perfect conformity with external 
circumstances. They retain all their sense of local- 
ity, all their cognition of time, and their knowledge 
of the persons who may be around them. Now 
natural sleepwakers are generally acting under some 
delusion. They will get astride upon a chair and 
fancy that they have mounted a horse, and, advanc- 
11 



122 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

ing still further into hallucination, will whip and spur 
their imaginary steed, supposing that they are per- 
forming twelve miles within the hour. Like Lady 
Macbeth, they will see what is not, and, their waking 
thoughts continuing to influence their slumbers, they 
will suppose themselves still engaged in deeds which 
have been long numbered with the shadows past. I 
do not say that this is always the case ; — but facts 
will bear me out in the assertion that auto-sleepwak- 
ing can never be characterized as an unillusive state. 

Again, mesmeric sleepwaking, in some respects, 
resembles the exaltation produced by opium ; but we 
have only to read the celebrated Confessions of an 
Opium-eater, to be convinced that the votaries of that 
drug live in a fantastic and ideal world. 

With natural sleep mesmeric sleepwaking can 
least of all be identified. That it is as different from 
this as natural sleep itself is from waking, may be 
judged from the following circumstance : E. A., re- 
turning with me and two other persons from an 
evening party, fell asleep in the carriage. I made 
the mesmeric passes over him without contact and in 
silence. After about the usual time required for 
mesmerising him when awake, he began to stir and 
testify uneasiness. Soon after, he spoke, and up- 
braided me for taking him at a disadvantage, and for 
changing his natural sleep into the mesmeric. There 
was as marked a change in his condition as if he had 
actually shaken off slumber. A lady l , whose daugh- 
ter was sometimes singularly affected by a species of 

1 See note relating to Madlle. Estelle PH., in Book II. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 123 

auto-sleepwaking. presenting many of the features of 
the mesmeric state, told me that the patient would 
occasionally go to bed. while in what she called the 
"crise," fall into a natural sleep, rest well, yet rise 
the next morning, still, as it were, self-mesmerised. 
Chardel also, a French writer on mesmerism, gives 
an interesting account of two sisters whom he mes- 
merised, as a physician, with the hope of checking 
a tendency to consumption which they had both 
evinced. One evening, being in sleepwaking, they, 
as if prompted by a natural instinct, entreated their 
mesmeriser to leave them in that state, only so far 
demesmerising them as to enable them to open their 
eye- and to he committed to their own self-guidance. 
Day after day they renewed then- petition — for day 
after day they fell health returning under the mes- 
meric influence. In other respects they pursued 
their usual habits, and their mesmeric existence had 
its alternate periods of sleep and of waking, as regu- 
lar as those of the natural life. At the end of three 
months, their cure appearing to be complete, M. 
Chardel conducted the sisters, accompanied by their 
mother, to a beautiful spot in the country. Where he 
restored them to a knowledge of themselves. He 
describes, in lively terms, their surprise and joy on 
returning to consciousness. It was winter when they 
entered the mesmeric state — it was now spring. 
The ground was then covered with snow, but now 
with flowers. They were then looking forward to an 
early grave; but now the feeling of renewed health 
tinged every thing with hope and life — almost 
doubting if they did not dream, they threw them- 



124 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

selves into their mother's arms, gathered flowers, and 
smelt to them, and endeavored, by the exercise of 
their senses, to convince themselves that it was all a 
blessed reality. Not a circumstance of the three past 
months survived in their memory. 

And this leads me further to remark, that the ab- 
solute forgetfulness which severs the mysterious state 
of mesmeric sleepwaking from the cognizance of or- 
dinary consciousness, sets a peculiar seal upon this 
very remarkable condition of man. The drunkard 
has his glimpses of remembrance ; the opium-eater 
can recount his visions ; the natural sleepwaker may 
sometimes recall the dreams that influenced his 
sleeping actions : but he who emerges from the 
mesmeric state, when it is true and perfect, has 
shaken hands with memory on the threshold. It is 
true that reverie shares this complete oblivion ; but 
then reverie is a state of illusion and of incoherent 
thinking. Darwin, who has treated of it at length, 
characterizes it as such, and mentions a young lady 
(in whom reverie had become a malady), who, when 
under a paroxysm of this complaint, would converse 
with imaginary visiters. On one occasion, while thus 
afflicted, she took off her shoe, looked at it, and said 
" A little longer and a little wider, even this would 
make me a coffin ! " 

With reverie, then, mesmeric sleepwaking cannot 
be identified, and in every point of view we seem 
justified in considering it as a state apart from all 
others — a distinct and peculiar condition of man. 

I do not, however, forget that these deductions are 
founded on the proceeds of my individual observa- 



i 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 125 

tion, nor that it is essential that the experiments 
which are their base should be capable of repetition, 
in order that each man may. if lit 4 so pleases, bring 
my accuracy to the tesfl of his own senses. Convin- 
ced that persona] observation, if sincere, will establish 
all that 1 have advanced, 1 urge every one to inquire 

and to judge tor himself. And this peculiar advan- 
tage attends upon mesmerism, — the proof of it, by 
experiment. i< in the hands of all. The mesineriser 
makes no mysterious monopoly of his art. but con- 
tends that the power to mesmerise and the capacity of 
being mesmerised, however modified by circumstances, 
may be developed in every human being. More- 
over, for that repetition of the mesmeric phenomena 
which is necessary to produce a conviction of their 
reality there is not needed, as m chemistry or optics, 
an assemblage of substances, or a complicated appa? 
ratus which few can command. The follies of the 
b&quet and of the magnetic rod have perished with 

Mesmer, and at the present day the mesineriser\s eye 
and hand are his sole " conjuration and mighty magic." 
But here it may be asked, " Why then, if the 
proof be so easy, is the world so hard of belief?" 
The answer is obvious : because there are few who 
will take the trouble to prove facts, which, from causes 
already numbered, men had rather not believe. 
Besides, though I do not hesitate to say that all who 
are really desirous to obtain proofs of mesmerism 
may, with comparative ease, obtain them ; still, in 
searching for these, a virtue is required, which is by 
no means a general attribute of mankind ; namely, per- 
severance. Nothing, indeed, is easier than for a man 
11* 



126 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

who dislikes being troubled with the new ideas which 
the subject of mesmerism introduces into the mind, 
to make a hasty trial of the alleged power, and failing 
to elicit or to experience any of its effects, to say, 
" I have proved it and found it nought." But he 
who adopts this facile mode of dismissing a trouble- 
some question can scarcely be called an inquirer, nor 
can his verdict have much weight. To examine a 
phenomenon is not sufficient : we must examine it 
also adequately ; and if it be recognised as a princi- 
ple that a fact is not to be admitted till after a re- 
peated scrutiny, neither, in common justice, should it 
be rejected till after the same deliberate investigation. 
But whether the difficulties attendant upon a verifica- 
tion of those phenomena which I have witnessed and 
carefully noted have been under or overstated, I must, 
as a principle, inculcate a dependence upon the ob- 
server who makes the subject his study, rather than 
on the captious opponent or indifferent idler who ap- 
proaches the same theme with a want of temper or a 
want of patience, which equally disqualify a man 
from judging rightly. Putting myself wholly out of 
the question, and speaking as if I were only justifying, 
and claiming belief for, the first discoverer of mesmer- 
ism, I cannot but assert that there was a much greater 
chance of his being in the right than all who have 
subsequently proclaimed him in the wrong. In every 
case, the boldness and acuteness which lead a man to 
take new views of a subject and to combat ancient 
prejudices are in his favor. There is an innate con- 
sciousness attendant upon correct observation which 
upholds him and encourages him to war with the 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 127 

world. The sudden light that has struck him is like 
a light from heaven and brings conviction to his 
breast. His eyes are not deluded, but sharpened by 
desire. No other person can have that intimate zeal 
— that interest in the inquiry which urges him on- 
ward. His all is at stake, and consequently no one 
is so strict with him as he is with himself. Who can 
compare the cursory and partial views of the great 
body of mankind with his; We may call him a 
visionary or a heretic* but, remembering the slow but 
certain triumph of Harvey and Galileo, we should be 
cautious how we brand him with epithets which may 
only recoil upon ourselves. How abundant are the 
proofs that all which is most opposed to the passions 
and prejudices of men is most likely to be true! 

Again, in the history of all observational science 
there are precedents to show that the accuracy of the 

most genuine experiments has been called in ques- 
tion by those who were unable to repeat them. Of 
this the reception which the Newtonian doctrine of 
light and colors met with from the world is a familiar 
instance, the more to be noted on account of New- 
ton's reputation as a strict investigator. Abjuring all 
hypothesis and cautiously pursuing the method of in- 
duction which Bacon had substituted for the worth- 
less dogmatism of the schools, the great philosopher, 
one might have thought, could have had nothing to 
apprehend from the petulance of opposition. His 
theorems were facts which every man might verify to 
himself by the aid of his own senses. And yet in 
many cases Newton appealed in vain to the common 
testimony of our common nature. The correctness 



128 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

of his experiments was doubted by many scientific 
men both of his and other countries ; a host of 
enemies impeached the soundness of his conclusions ; 
and even in a later age, after the general voice had 
ratified his theory, the celebrated Goethe, quitting his 
domain of high imagination, undertook to expose its 
errors in a work which will ever remain a monument 
of perverted genius. 

A certain dependence, then, upon the first observer 
of new phenomena is inculcated both by reason and 
by experience, and appears to be requisite, when we 
would ourselves examine the phenomena, to guard us 
from impatience and to support us through deceptive 
appearances. 

But, I would ask, is this the course pursued by the 
opponents of mesmerism ? Certainly not : they bring 
forward the defective trial of an experiment as a 
complete refutation of the experiment itself, and se- 
lect, with curious partiality, the one failure amongst 
innumerable instances of success, as an illustration of 
the nullity of mesmerism. Yet what would be said 
of a man who, going to see some well-known chemi- 
cal or other effect exhibited, and finding it fail through 
unforeseen circumstances, were to return home con- 
vinced that no such thing had ever existed ? What, 
again, would be thought of this man's state of intel- 
lect, were he to write a book to prove that certain 
phenomena, because he had not witnessed them, had 
never been seen by thousands who could support 
them by their testimony ? Yet, cannot even such an 
original skeptic as this be considered a whit more ab- 
surd than they who fondly fancy that by eoopartt 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 129 

statements and scattered histories of failure, collected 
from men as prejudiced as themselves, they can put 
down mesmerism ? Do they forget that all which ap- 
pears to be a mass of negative evidence is but air in 
the scale when weighed igainst one positive fact ? 

"It is a very obvious principle*" says Chalmers, 
"although often forgotten in the pride of prejudice, 
and of controversy, thai what has been seen by one 
pair of human eyes is of force to countervail all that 
has been reasoned or guessed at by a thousand hu- 
man understandings." 

Let, then, body alter body of learned men deny 
the phenomena of mesmerism and Logically disprove 
their existence, an appeal may evei and at any mo- 
ment be made to the " proof by experiment;" and* 
even should experiment itself fail a thousand times, 

the success of the thousandth and find trial would 

justify further examination. Till the authority of 
observation can be wholly set aside, the subject of 
our inquiry can never be said to have undergone its 
final ostracism. 



130 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING, 






SECTION III. 

SHOWING CERTAIN OF THE PHYSICAL AND METAPHY- 
SICAL CONDITIONS OF MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

Hitherto I have exhibited to my reader a succes- 
sion of patients, the greater part of whom I had no 
opportunity of mesmerising again. I may have been 
considered as trying an experiment upon a great scale, 
as to the mesmerisibility of mankind in general. Such 
a mode of proceeding has this advantage : — persons, 
who have been frequently mesmerised may be charged 
with having been well practised in their parts ; but 
they who exhibit for the first time the mesmeric char- 
acteristics, without even having heard them previously 
described, stand aloof from all suspicions of the kind. 
There is neither habit nor imitation nor duplicity to 
be charged upon them ; and therefore the phenom- 
ena they display may be regarded as eminently gen- 
uine. But, on the other hand, it should be consid- 
ered that such phenomena, if more to be relied on, 
are also humbler in decree than those belonoino: to a 
more advanced stage of sleepwaking : and this, I 
think, may be owned without prejudice to mesmer- 
ism ; for, as I have before observed, we cannot liken 
it to those purely mechanical agencies which affect 
persons as forcibly the first time as in all succeeding 
trials. Many of the phenomena are of such a kind 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 131 

as to be obviously capable of development ; and in 
demanding a certain license on this account we ask 
no more for mesmerism than is conceded in every 
case where man's intellect is concerned. Let it be 
always kept in mind that mesmeric sleepwaking is 
more than an exhibition of involuntary motions or 
mere physical changes. It is a state which appears 
to possess its own laws of perception and of action ; 
and, in this point of view, a mesmerised person may 
be considered as learning a new language in which 
he cannot express himself with eloquence or with 
ease until he lias mastered its idioms and possessed 
himself of its copiousness. When we reflect upon 
the difficulty we all find in acting in any unusual 
way, we cannot but perceive that time must be re- 
quisite to the development of a mode of existence 
which seems to be abnormal in the highest degree. 

It is evident then, that, in order to study the phe- 
nomena of mesmeric sleepwaking in their maturer 
development, it was necessary for me to mesmerise 
the same person frequently. This I have done in 
more than one instance, and the following has been 
the result of my observations : — 

In accordance with what has been suggested above, 
it is to be remarked that each successive time a per- 
son is mesmerised he becomes more easy of mesmer- 
isation, and more at home in his new capacities. 
Hence without effort he exhibits many phenomena 
which may be called spontaneous, in distinction to 
those which result more clearly from the peculiar re- 
lationship in which the mesmeriser, pro tempore, stands 
to his patient. The two classes of phenomena should 



132 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

be accurately distinguished, and their difference borne 
in mind. At present, I have chiefly given instances 
of the latter ; as was natural, considering that my 
earlier patients were more dependent upon myself 
than those whom I subsequently treated, and that in 
consequence my attention was chiefly turned to the 
mesmeric processes necessary for producing or direct- 
ing their sleepwaking. It was not till later, and till 
the task of guiding my patients could be, in a degree, 
remitted, that I was able to add some remarks, (which 
indeed appear essential to complete our view of mes- 
merism as a separate condition of man), upon the 
state of the bodily organs, and of the mental facul- 
ties, in the mesmeric sleepwaker. Beginning with 
the former, and dividing the corporeal functions into 
the sensitive, the vital, and the motory, we first in- 
quire — What is the state of the actual apparatus of 
the senses during mesmeric sleepwaking ? And first, 

Of the Eye. 

This is a part of the body which is earliest affected 
under that which we may call, without theory, the 
human influence. One of the first tokens a person 
gives of passing into mesmeric sleepwaking is a look 
of stupor in the eyes, and an apparent lack of power 
in the eyelids to perform the usual office of nictation. 
The upper lid, as I have before observed, falls very 
gradually over the organ of sight, and sometimes. 
ceasing to move altogether, remains suspended, as it 
were, in such a manner as that the eye appears to be 
three quarters closed. When this continues to be 
the case, the patient rarely falls into sleepwaking. the 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 133 

exceptions occurring commonly amongst those who 
sleep with their eyes partly open and who keep them 
in the same state during the whole period of their 
sleepwaking. The patient, when interrogated as to 
his sensationSj will declare, (retaining his conscious- 
ness at the time) that he feels prickings in his eyelids, 
and. as far as outward actions can he proof, the same 
uneasy sensation remains 01 recurs at intervals during 
the sleepwaking. For all thesleepwakers 'at I have 
seen rub their eyes frequently, so that any one 
would think they were about to awake; but their 
slumber remains undisturbed, and the action alluded 
to seems simply automatic, as when in natural sleep 
we brush oil' a fly from the face without being con- 
scious of the movement I once asked a sleepwaker 

why she rubbed her eyes, and she replied." Did 1 do 

so? [ suppose if i- a tuck I have" ("je suppose que 

c'est une habitude"). I have before remarked that 
many persons in semi-sleepwaking retain their con- 
sciousness, yet are wholly unable to open their eyes. 
A scientific man, accustomed to investigation, being 
in this state, assured me that he experienced a gra- 
dual paralysis of the nerve connected with the eye, 
and with the motive powers of the eye-lid. and that 
at length his utmost efforts of volition were insuffi- 
cient to make the orbicular muscles obey him as 
usual. Sleepwaking being complete, the eye is gene- 
rally first closed, yet not exactly as in sleep. The 
following differences may be noted : — 1st. The place 
where the eye-lids meet, in a natural way, is much 
below the level of the transverse diameter of the eye ; 
but I have observed that in sleepwaking the line of 
V2 



134 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

contact is often thrown so high above its ordinary 
situation as to coincide with what Haller calls the 
equator oculi. 2dly. There is a compressed look 
about the lids, as if they were rather held down by 
force than quietly and naturally closed. 3dly. The 
ball of the eye is in frequent and violent motion , 
which, in those who have prominent eyes especially, 
can be plainly discerned beneath the skin of the eye- 
lids. All these circumstances, it should be remem- 
bered, are actually distinctive of the mesmeric sleep ; 
for many persons who form a wrong notion concern- 
ing it suppose, before assisting (as the French say) 
at a seance of mesmerism, that they are to see a some- 
thing precisely like natural slumber, and exclaim, 
when the reality is before them, u This must be all 
a trick," only because their erroneous ideas are 
contradicted. With regard to the internal state of 
the eye during mesmeric sleepwaking, it is, of course, 
difficult to judge. No force, short of that which 
would seriously injure the sleepwaker, can wrench 
asunder the eyelids. I have tried this and made 
others try it, and the resistance to such efforts was 
so great that, to be appreciated, it must be felt. 
But that which violence cannot accomplish, the 
command of the mesmeriser can ordinarily effect, 
though that he should use this power with great dis- 
cretion the following occurrence will show. I once 
asked Mademoiselle Anna M , (whom.' after re- 
turning to the Continent in 1837. I frequently mes- 
merised) whether she could open her eyes, which, at 
the time, were fast shut in mesmeric sleepwaking. 
Her reply was, " I can do it, if you insist that I 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 135 

should ; but I warn you that you will see something 
very disagreeable, and. besides, the effort will do 
me no good.' 1 Notwithstanding this warning, I 
commanded my metmeri$ii t<> open her eyes. She 
did so. It was really a fearful sight. The eye- 
balls were turned up, and converged towards the 
nose, the white of the eye waa bloodshot, and the 
whole organ quivering and convulsed. As may be 
supposed, I did not long keep my sleepwakcfr in what 
appeared to me 8 painful state, and. at my command, 
she again closed her eyes- On awaking her shortly 

after, what was mv alarm to hear her declare that 

she saw nothing whatever! She appeared to be 
much agitated, and my thoughts may be conceived; 
as long as I had the least reason to tear that my rash 
experiment might end in her being blind for life. 
The exigence of the moment, hpwever, roused me to 
rtion, and the idea occurred to me that the best 
thing I could do was to re-mesmerise my patient as 
quickly as possible. This I did. As soon as she 
had passed into the tnesmeiiC state, she became calm 
and begged me not to be alarmed, as the blindness 
she had just experienced was but the momentary 
effect of the fatigue to her eyes, caused by the effort 
to open them. She then requested me to breathe 

on her eyes, and to lay my hand on them, after 
which, she assured me that I might awake her with- 
out any further apprehension. In effect, the tran- 
sient but fearful attack of blindness was passed away. 

After this, as may be supposed. I was not very ready 
to bid my sleepwakers open their eyes. I have also 
found in them all, when consulted on the subject, an 



136 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

extreme dislike to the idea. I have, however, reason 
to think that the position of the eyeball is, in most 
sleepwakers, the same as it appeared in Mademoiselle 

M- . I once asked one of my patients, while in 

the waking state, if he knew in what position the 
eyes were during sleepwaking, and he replied, " I do 
not at all know, but I should suppose just the same 
as now. Why should there be any difference VI 
Having thus ascertained that he had no preconcep- 
tions on the subject, I again asked him, when in 
sleepwaking, " In what position are your eyes ?" 
" I will show you," he replied ; and without a mo- 
ment's hesitation, seized a pencil and a paper that 
lay on the table, and drew an eye, with the ball 
turned up to one corner, and only partly seen. [I 
should observe that this sleepwaker had an extraordi- 
nary power of vision in the mesmeric state, to which 
I shall hereafter have occasion more particularly to 
allude.] 

Another time, I had an opportunity of making 
further remarks on the state of the eye, under mes- 
meric sleepwaking, through the kindness of Mr. 
Berckmans, architect of the province of Antwerp — 
a man whom I have pleasure in naming, as one who 
utilizes mesmerism by employing it (and success- 
fully) in the relief of maladies. This gentleman 
permitted me to see one of* his sleepwakers, who, 
from a natural predisposition, often kept her eves 
open during sleepwaking. During twenty minutes 
or half an hour that I saw 7 her thus, I could most 
truly affirm that, though her eyes were open, their 
" sense w r as shut." A dull film seemed to over- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 137 

spread them ; the pupil was dilated, and did not 
contract with light. A candle brought near, or a 
hand waved suddenly and quickly before the pa- 
tient's eyes, produced no perceptible alteration or 
motion either in the lid or in the apparatus of vision. 
Altogether, there seems to be every reason to con- 
clude that the eye in mesmeric sleepwaking is either 
so disordered or so paralyzed in its functions as to 

cease to convey impressions to the mind — in any 

mode at least that can be termed ordinary. 

Secondly. I now proceed to show that a similar 
derangement of function seems to take place as re- 
gards the sense of hearing. 

In proportion ;i^ persons sink deeper into mesmeric 
Bleepwaking, their external senses se< m blunted, one 
by one. and so far there is certainly a relation be- 
tween the mesmeric and the natural sleep* 

The eye. as we have seen, yields fust to the slum- 
brous influence. Long after tins organ has ceased 

to act, the hearing retains all its acuteness. and the 
sleepwaker is able to indicate w hat sounds are going 
on around ; but at length tin; " porches of the ear" 
are closed as well as the M curtain of the eye," and 
the patient, though still alive to feeling, is dead to 
every sound save that of the (nesmeriser's voice. I 
have proved this times innumerable — so frequently, 
indeed, that it is better to give the genera] results of 
the experiments I have witnessed than to state one 
in particular. Often have the members of my family, 
or visiters, who perhaps were but little inclined to 
believe in mesmerism, tried to awaken Mademoiselle 

M , or to startle her by sudden noises. Logs of 

Y4* 



138 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

wood have been dashed against the floor; plates 
have been suddenly broken ; her name has been 
shouted out, close to her ear ; in vain. Other per- 
sons present have shown that they were startled — 
but not the sleepwaker. Once or twice, indeed, on 
such occasions, when asked if she heard any thing, 
she has replied, u No, I heard nothing ; but I thought, 
just now, something pushed against my chair ; " a 
mode of expression which deserves to be remarked, 
as analogous to that used by deaf persons to describe 
the sensations given them by the concussion of the 
air produced by great sounds. I once met a young 
lady, perfectly deaf and dumb from her birth, who 
was, in this way, remarkably sensitive to the undula- 
tions of the air. I have frequently seen her start 
when a door was opened, or when any thing fell sud- 
denly, and the account she gave to me of this, in 
writing, was that she felt as if some one had pushed 
against her. So susceptible indeed was she to aerial 
vibrations that she could distinguish a certain mea- 
sure and rhythm in harmonious chords which gave 
her a marked degree of pleasure. She would take a 
stick, and, putting one end of it in her mouth, would 
place the other in contact with the piano, while any 
one was playing on it. Discords struck upon the 
instrument made her shudder, and convulsed her fea- 
tures with all that pantomimic exaggeration so usual 
in the dumb ; but soft and pleasing sequences of 
sound soothed her and brought a satisfied smile over 
her countenance. 

It has appeared to me that the mesmerised possess 
similar perceptions of sound apart from the natural 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 139 

sense of hearing, and that, like the young lady above 
alluded to, they require certain conductors, in order 
to make them apprehend a regular series of aerial 
vibrations. Be it however remarked that the degree 
of this isolation from sounds, considered as sounds, 
depends on the intensity of the mesmeric sleep ; for 
it should ever be kept in mind that mesmeric sleep- 
waking has its shades and graduations, varying from 
consciousness fully retained to its faintest twilight or 
utter extinction. A due recollection of this truth 
will prevent many mistakes and unfounded expecta- 
tions relative to our subject. 

In the case of Mademoiselle M , as being a 

perfect sleepwaker. the insulation from all sounds to 
which I did not serve as conductor was complete. 
This phenomenon, u indeed most of the others I 

have mentioned. was rather accidentally offered to 
my remark than looked for or expected. A lady, 
present when Mademoiselle M had been mes- 
merised by me. went up to the sleepwaker and spoke 
to her for some time. She however did not seem 
to hear what was said, and indeed held her head 
down with every sign of inattention. By mere ac- 
cident the speaker touched me. Then suddenly the 
sleepwaker lifted Up her head, and assumed the ex- 
pression of listening. A slight movement drew me 
away from contact with the speaker, when the sleep- 
waker said — "I hear nothing now." She then 
herself took the lady's hand, placed it in mine, and 
laid her own upon both so as to be in contact with 
each, saying, " Now I hear well." We subsequently 
found that it was under such an arrangement as this 



140 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

that the sleepwaker could best hear any one speak, 
though did a person talking merely touch me she 
manifested some perceptions of sound. On one oc- 
casion, when a musician was singing and playing 
during her mesmeric trance, she, seeing him at the 
piano, expressed a desire to hear the performance, 
and, to accomplish this, requested me to lay one hand 
on the musician's shoulder, while she herself laid a 
hand upon mine. So placed, she heard the singing 
well, but the piano indistinctly. 

Others of my sleepwakers manifested similar phe- 
nomena, some even the first time of being mesmer- 
ised, when they knew nothing of the characteristics 
of mesmeric sleepwaking. The scientific person to 
whom I have once before alluded, and whose testi- 
mony is valuable, inasmuch as his habits of mind led 
him ever to separate illusion from truth, assured me, 
when in the mesmeric state, that he could hear no 
sound whatever except my voice. I made another 
person speak who was in the room on that occasion, 
and the sleepwaker was unaware that any thing had 
been said. 

Another patient (E. A , to whom I shall have 

occasion to allude hereafter) said, when I was sing- 
ing, " You should ask Mr. V " (a musician who 

was in the room) " to accompany you." I did so ; 

but, though Mr. V made a loud accompaniment 

to voice, E. A. kept calling out, " Why does he not 
play ? " 

3dly. State of the nerves of touch. — Every one 
has heard of the insensibility of sleepwakers to exter- 
nal stimuli. Even in the present crisis of hostility to 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIKG. 141 

mesmerism, the world seems agreed to go the length 
of believing, with Mr. Edwin Lee. that, " in the states 
of partial torpor, not unfrequently occurring in ner- 
vous persons," (so does the cautious doctor define 
mesmeric deepwaking,) "the individuals are, to a 
certain extent, insensible to mechanical stimulants." 
This being granted, the evidence which 1 can bring 
forward to confirm the alleged phenomenon is, fortu- 
nately, hut little ii'' ded : and. in truth, I was too 
little inclined to try such cruellies upon my sleep- 
walkers, as plunging in pina and applying inoxas, to 
be able to offer numerous proofs upon the subject. 
Such experiments, however unfell at the time, cannot 
but produce effects <>f which the patients \\ ill become 
Sensible afterward-: and. when tiny are smarting 
under the pain occasioned by the burning away of 
half an inch of skin, they will be but ill consoled by 
the glory of having suffered in the iiise of science. 
On these grounds, 1 have refused either to torment 
my sleepwakers or to allow them to be tormented. 
However, a friend of mine was once determined to 
try an experiment of this kind: and, without giving 
me any notice of his intentions, he suddenly plunged 

a large pin into the back of the hand of Anna M , 

so that the blood came when it was withdrawn. She 
neither moved her hand nor started, nor seemed in 
any way sensible of the injury. About half an hour 
after, being still in the mesmeric state, she looked at 
her hand, as if by accident, and, seeing the congealed 
blood on it, asked, " What in the world is this ? " 
At another time, being lightly touched with the end 
of a feather about the lips and nostrils, (a proceeding 



142 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

which few can endure,) she gave no token of sensa- 
tion, and once, while I was mesmerising her, she 
said, " I feel now quite comfortable," at the very 
moment when some one, fond of experiment, was 
pulling her ear till it became scarlet. [This inflam- 
ing of the cuticle seems to show, by the way, that 
the skin, in sleepwaking, loses none of its functions, 
though it no longer transmits sensations to the mind.] 
Other little circumstances, naturally presenting them- 
selves, have confirmed to me the physical insensibil- 
ity of sleepwakers. Anna M had once a swollen 

and very painful finger. In her waking state she 
complained bitterly of the torment she endured from 
this, and was constantly breathing on the disordered 
part. Once, in sleepwaking, she seemed to forget 
her finger altogether ; and, on being interrogated, 
declared that she felt no pain. 

Another of my sleepwakers (E. A ) watched 

his sensations, while he was entering into the mes- 
meric state, up to the last moment, when conscious- 
ness became extinguished. He told me that he could 
distinctly perceive a gradual deadening of sensation ; 
that at length he no longer felt his limbs : but that 
all his life and feeling seemed to rally towards the 
brain. In the mesmeric state, he continued to assure 
me that he was corporeally insensible ; and anxious. 
as it seemed, to try experiments upon himself, lie 
would bite his own hand till he drew blood, without, 
as he affirmed, exciting sensation. 

4thly. State of the organs of taste. — That these 
also share the insensibility of the other senses I have 
had every reason to believe. Anna INI could 






MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 143 

never distinguish one substance, that was placed, 
with precaution, in her mouth, from another. I have 
told her that cfa ese was very good Orange, or water 
wine : and >iie. trusting to my veracity, has impli- 
citly believed me : her faith in my assertions being 

uncorrected by the exercise of her usual faculties, 
and preponderating manifestly over these. 1 have 

tried upon her. when in sleepwakinir. the well-known 
experiment of placing a piece of einc and a piece of 

silver, the one above, the other below, the tongue, 
and then bringing them suddenly in contact ; but no 
metallic taste was peiceiwd by her. The same ex- 
periment, repeated in her waking Mate, produced its 

usual result, 

5thly. Thi itncU $eem$ equoUy unaffected by exter- 
nal stimuhu. — 1 have held, for a considerable time, 
strong ammonia, which made my own e\es water, 

even at a distance, clove under the nose of a sleep- 

waker. while the mouth was shut and respiration 
carried on only through the nostrils. The breathing 
proceeded as regularly as before ; then' was no 
watering of the eve : in short, the patient (a sister of 
Theodore) gave no token whatever of sensibility in 

the olfactory nerves, or those of common sensation 
or touch. 

Having finished our review of the sensitive organs, 
we now proceed to consider the state of those which 
may be called vital, viz.. the respiratory, the circula- 
tory, and the digestive. 

In those mesmerised persons who have fallen 
under my observation, the respiration has been 
slower and more regular than usual, resembling what 



144 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

it is in sleep. Occasionally, when the sleepwaker 
has been permitted to repose, either in a sitting or 
cumbent posture, the breathing has become louder, 
almost approaching to stertorous. Any one seeing 
the mesmerised at such times would pronounce them 
to be really asleep ; but the proof that this cannot be 
the case is, that they still hear and answer the mes- 
meriser's voice. 

I have found, also, that, in mesmeric sleepwaking, 
the heart beats more slowly and evenly than in the 
normal state, and that the pulse indicates a corres- 
ponding change in the circulation. 

On one occasion, two medical men, by no means 
favorable to mesmerism, were present when I was 

about to mesmerise Mademoiselle M . It was 

during the festivities of the Antwerp carnival ; and 
my fair patient, having been at a ball for two nights 
running, was fatigued, and feverish — complaining 
much of pains and stiffness in her limbs. Before 
beginning to mesmerise, I requested the medical men 
to feel her pulse. On doing this, their exclamation 
was, " You ought to be in your bed, Mademoiselle, 
for you have a great deal of fever." In fact, her 
pulse was one hundred and twenty, her skin hot and 
dry, and her tongue white. I then threw my patient 
into sleepwaking ; and after she had continued in 
that state, reposing on a chair, for about a quarter of 
an hour, I again asked the doctors to feel her pulse. 
Each took a wrist, as before, with due professional 
gravity, and with a stop-watch counted the pulsa- 
tions. u Marvellous ! " they both exclaimed. " The 
pulse beats quite other than when we last felt it. The 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 145 

sharp wiry rebound of fever is gone, and the pulsa- 
tions, besides being soft, full, and regular, are not 
more than eighty in a minute." After this I made 
my patient rise from her chair, and during the hour 
that she remained in sleepwaking, she was in almost 
constant motion ; vet she neither complained of, nor 
betrayed in her gestures, the fatigue and stillness 
from which she had previously been suffering. On 
awaking. Hie doctors again inspected her state, and 
assured me that every symptom of malady had dis- 
appeared. The patient's pulse had sunk to seventy- 
four in the minute : her skin was cool; her tongue 
no longer indicative of lever. When asked for an 
account of her own personal sensations, she declared 
that she i« Il so renovated] and so entirely free from 
pain and uneasiness, that she should have thought 
that the sleep of two nights had heen put together 
in the single hour of her sleepwaking. Hearing this, 
the doctors were inclined to exclaim, with him of the 
fraternity in Macbeth, " A great perturbation in na- 
ture ! To receive at once the benefit of sleep, and 
do the effects of watching." 

The effect of the Mesmeric Sleep on the Digestive Or 
gans seems equally reparatory, and indicative of in- 
creased Power. 

E. A , a youth aged fifteen, whom I frequently 

mesmerised, and whose general health was excellent, 
was suffering one day from an accidental attack of 
indigestion, accompanied by slight sickness. During 
an hour's sleepwaking his uneasy feelings were sus- 

13 



146 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIN&. 

pended, and, when he awoke, were found to be com- 
pletely removed. At another time — not with a view 
to any particular experiment, but in the way of a plea- 
santry — I kept the same sleepwaker in the mesmeric 
state for a longer period than usual, so as to make 
him eat his supper with our family party, while still 
in sleepwaking. Our evening meal was brought in ; 
and the patient, at my request, (for otherwise he did 
not seem to care about taking anything,) ate what- 
ever was given him ; and as our object was to make 
him feel, on awaking, that he had had his supper, 
and to wonder how this had come to pass, we sup- 
plied him plentifully with food, so that he actually 
made a fuller meal than was usual with him at the 
same hour. We then had the supper things remov- 
ed ; and, in about a quarter of an hour afterwards 
I awoke the patient. His first question was, " Have 
I been long asleep ?" " How long should you sup- 
pose ?" we inquired. " I cannot imagine," he re- 
plied ; " but I hope we shall soon have supper, for I 
am very hungry I" At this we all laughed, and 
assured him that he had just made a capital meal — 
a piece of information which he at first refused to 
believe. The bell was rung, and the servant called 
in to depose to the fact, before he could credit it ; 
and then he appeared by no means disposed to rest 
contentedwith what seemed in his idea a refection 
as visionary as that wherewith the Barmecide in the 
Arabian nights regaled the beggar. He begged 
to have if it were only a crust of bread, to appease 
the cravings of hunger ; and, the wherewithal being 
afforded, soon made a second repast as substantial 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 147 

as that which we had forced upon him during his 
sleepwaking. 1 

Again, before the above occurrence had taken 
place, I mesmerised the same person near the hour 
of luncheon ; he having previously observed that he 
was very hungry, and therefore hoped I should 
wake him soon, in order that he might eat his accus- 
tomed meal. When in mesmeric sleepwaking, he 
complained no more of hunger ; and, indeed, assured 
me that he felt nothing whatever of the powerful 
appetite which had so recently tormented him. He 

1 At the time that the above phenomenon presented itself, I had 
not met with an interesting account of an extraordinary cure by 
mesmerism, written by M. Despine, physician at Aix-en-Savoie. 

Subsequently, on reading the Doctor's pamphlet, I was struck 
with the following passages and their relation to the subject we 
have been considering : — 

" Estelle a l'appetence de tout ce qui lui convenait, et de ce 
qu'elle aimait dans ses premiers ans. De plus, elle en mange, 
pendant sa crise, arte abandonee ct impuniment, sans jamais en 
eentir le moindre mal-aise ; pendant que, dans son etat naturel, elle 
ne saurait s'ecarter de son regime vegetal habituel, sans en eprouver 
des crampes, &c. 

" On dirait que notre malade semblait avoir deux estomacs— - 
Tun pour l'etat de crise, l'autre pour celui de veille. 

" Mais ce qui paraitra plus singulier encore, e'est que les alimens, 
pris en abondancc dans la crise, ne paraissaient pas, le moins du 
inonde, la rassasier pour le temps de veille, etvice versa." 

Since reading the above, I have had an opportunity of seeing 
the young person mentioned — a most interesting little girl of thir- 
teen years of age, living at Neufchatel, in Switzerland. Her mo- 
ther certified to me all the above particulars, and told me that mes- 
merism alone had cured her daughter Estelle of paralysis and spine 
complaint, after all other means had been tried in vain. Of the 
degree of the patient's previous illness of course I can only speak 
from the testimony of others ; but this I can certify, that, when I 

saw Mademoiselle Estelle 1H , she was apparently in perfect 

health and enjoying the activity natural to her age. 



148 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

had no desire to awake ; and, as I was engaged in 
trying upon him some interesting experiments relating 
to vision, I did not think of demesmerising him till 
late in the day — about half an hour before dinner. 
The moment he was restored to the normal state, he 
declared that he was almost mad with hunger ; and 
when I told him how long he had been in sleep- 
waking, was quite angry that I had not waked him 
sooner. Though told that dinner would soon be on 
the table, he begged to eat something immediately. 

This and the preceding anecdotes seem to indicate 
that the digestive functions are by no means disor- 
dered or suspended during mesmeric sleepwaking ; 
but, on the contrary, that they act more powerfully : 
while, on the other hand, they do not, as usual, con- 
vey intimations of their condition to the mind ; for, 
in the first instance, we have seen indigestion re- 
moved during sleepwaking — a proof that the appa- 
ratus of digestion is strengthened in the mesmeric 
slumber. Secondly, we have been made aware of 
digestion having been rapidly performed in the mes- 
meric state : a full meal having been so quickly 
assimilated to the juices of the body as to cause the 
sensation of hunger to recur almost immediately 
after it was taken. Thirdly, we have been shown 
hunger progressing as usual, but unfelt, during the 
whole period of the mesmeric sleep. 

I may add that the increased energy given to the 
digestive functions during mesmeric sleepwaking has 
seemed, in some cases to confer a lasting benefit. 

Mademoiselle M , though in other respects strong 

and healthy, suffered, when I first saw her, from 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 149 

indigestion, which manifested itself in painful fits of 
colic. Subsequently she thus wrote to me : — " With 
regard to my complaints of the stomach, I have not 
felt the least symptoms since my last mesmerising. 
My malady has been too severe, and the relief I have 
experienced too effectual, for me to doubt of the 
good effects of mesmerism. 91 

Again, that the human influence is reparatory of 
the vital functions generally, I had a proof in the 
case of a gentleman (already mentioned in Sect. II.) 
who allowed me to mesmerise him when he was suf- 
fering from the fatigue of a long journey and night- 
travelling. He remained in the mesmeric state half 
an hour only, yet, on awaking, he exclaimed, " Je 
me sens comme nouveau-n£." All sense of lassi- 
tude was gone. 

From the vital we proceed to a consideration of 
the motive powers. 

Any one who has attended to the cases of mesme- 
ric sleepwaking. which I have detailed elsewhere, 
must have remarked that the natural inclination of 
mesmeric patients is to remain perfectly still. It is 
only by the mesmeriser's persuasion that they are 
induced to move ; and their first attempts at walking 
are, like those of an infant learning to use its limbs, 
weak and tottering. After a time, however, by a sort 
of education from the mesmeriser, the sleepwaker is 
enabled to move freely and firmly. The mind has 
evidently resumed its empire over the nerves of mo- 
tion, yet still is disconnected from the nerves of 
sense; — a circumstance which strongly illustrates 
Sir Charles Bell's valuable discovery respecting the 
13* 



150 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

absolute distinctness of these two sets of nerves ; and 
which confirms the thesis, that motion is ever propa- 
gated downward, from the brain to the exterior of the 
body ; while sensation is conveyed upward, from the 
extremities of the nerves to the brain. I think, also, 
that the power which sleepwakers possess over their 
motory system proves satisfactorily that, according to 
the ingenious suggestion of Sir C. Bell, there exists a 
distinct muscular sense ; for we see it here insulated, 
and acting at a time when all the other senses have 
ceased their functions. Nor does the muscular sense 
merely act under mesmeric sleepwaking, but it acts 
(from the time that the patient is habituated to his 
new existence) in a very perfect manner. I have seen 
displayed by sleepwakers an activity which they did 
not possess awake. 

Availing myself of the attraction which draws the 
patient after the mesmeriser, I have made Made- 
moiselle M follow me, when mounting upon 

chairs or wardrobes. Another of my mesmerisees, 
when I got upon a chair, leapt lightly up after me ; 
and, there being scarcely room for her to stand, re- 
mained poised in a very extraordinary manner, on 
the extreme edge of the chair, exhibiting, in that po- 
sition, an ease and graceful firmness, quite remote 
from the characteristics of her usually reserved de- 
meanor. 

Additional strength as well as agility of body seems 
to accompany the more advanced periods of the mes- 
meric state. E. A , in sleepwaking, could throw, 

in wrestling, a person he could not master when 
awake ; and once he burst a locked door open with 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 151 

an ease that was extraordinary. The same phenom- 
ena, which occur with respect to the motor muscles 
in general, take place also as regards the muscles of 
the larynx. On firs! inesmerisation, the voice of the 
patient is weak, and it is evidently an exertion for 
him to speak at all ; hut subsequently he resumes his 
powers of speech] and, if musical, can sing as well 
as in the waking state. I should, however, observe, 
that the tone to which he pitches his voice in con- 
versation depends much upon that in which the nies- 
meriser addresses him: should the former whisper, 
he whispers too, or the contrary. This is the gen- 
eral rule ; but Anna M offered an exception to 

this. Her voice in deepwaking was generally very 
feeble, and she used to complain of its extinction. 

Though hitherto treating of the patient separately 

from the mesmeri>er. it appear- to me that this branch 
of my subject would be incomplete, did 1 not add to 
such phenomena of motion as are proper to the sleep- 
waker others which are caused by the niesnieriser's 
influence over his patient. 

I have already remarked that the sleepwaker exhib- 
its an occasional community of motion with the mes- 
meriser, and adopts something of his general deport- 
ment. Some additional instances of these phenom- 
ena mav be interesting. 

Anna M , in her mesmeric state, mounted a 

staircase with me, in order to visit an invalid lady of 
our party. I observed that she ascended two stairs 
at a time, after a manner that had become habitual 
to me. At another time, when I had a cold, she, 
though free from such an affection in her natural 



153 



MESMERIC ILEEPWAKING. 



state, coughed, in her sleepwakirig, whenever 1 did. 
I extract the following from a register of our mesmeric 
proceedings, <>n<<^ kept by one of our family. 

January 2, L838. tc The mesmerister rubs his 

hands, and Anna M immediately does the same. 

When the mesmeriser blows his nose, the patient 
puis her hand up to hers, as if doing the same thing. 
When the former began to dance, the latter did so 
too, imitating exactly ih< 4 movements of her mesmer- 
iser, and snapping her fingers as he did. The mes- 
meriser, having tinned from the patient, who was 

silting at a table, took up a pencil, and, without her 

seeing him, made some strokes upon paper. The 

patient took up another pencil which lay at hand, 

and made similar strokes.*' 

With respect to the times when these phenomena 
were exhibited, I remarked that they occurred espe- 
cially when any more violent muscular motion took 

place on my part, such as in the act of blowing my 

nose, of dancing, Ac; — also, when m\ attention 
was particularly directed to the production of the 
phenomena. When such was the case, I have turned 
my back, and made gestures in perfect silence, (so 
as to prevent any suspicion of the patient being in- 
fluenced by sight or sound,) and they have been per- 
fectly imitated by her. Once, 1 agreed witha friend 
of mini 4 to put my hand into my coat pocket at a 

certain signal from him. The sleepwaker, though 
standing where she could know nothing of the cir- 
cumstance, thrust back her hand immediately into a 
similar position with my own. 'The same friend, 
who was determined to try everything to put the 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 153 

sleepwaker at fault, used to imitate my rubbing my 
hands, coughing, or blowing my nose, in order to in- 
duce Anna M to do the same ; and thus to prove 

that she was guided by sound, not by sympathy of 
motion. The patient, however, was never influenced 
in the slightest degree by these artifices. Whether 
such correspondences of motion result from purely 
mechanical causes may be much doubted: — but 
there is another class of motory phenomena in which 
the body of the inesmeri>er must clearly be consid- 
ered as the depository of some attractive force, en- 
tirely independent of his will : for they result simply 
from the position in winch the patient maybe placed 
relatively to tlie mesmeriser. 1 

Having frequently remarked that the head of a 
mesmerised person follows the hand of the mesmer* 
iser, as iron does the load-tone. I. in order to submit 
the phenomenon to the surest proof, bandaged the 

eyes of E. A previously to mesmerising him, 

and filled with cotton every possible interstice that 
might be left between the cheek and the handkerchief, 
in such a manner as to convince every person, who 

1 This mechanical attraction appears to have been first noticed 
by M. De Lausanno, who observed it in a patient of his own — a 
female, whose sensitiveness was remarkably developed. In a work 
on mesmerism, published at Paris, this author, who still, 1 believe, 
is living, gives a particular account of some interesting experi- 
ments relative to the subject. When M. De Lausanne was in an- 
other room, or even outside the house, the sleepwaker, above al- 
luded to, turned her head in the exact direction of her mesmeriser. 
This was established by repeated trials, before witnesses. It should 
be remembered that the development of similar phenomena, in so 
striking a degree, presupposes always a rare and advanced stage of 
sleep waking. 



154 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

witnessed the experiment, that for the patient to 
perceive by sight the motions of my hand was en- 
tirely out of the question. As soon, however, as 

E. A had entered into sleepwaking, his head 

followed my hand, at the distance of at least two 
feet, with unerring certainty. Did I place it on the 
left of his head, his head instantly inclined to that 
side ; was it in front, he bent forward to meet it ; 
was it behind him, he leant back towards it with 
what would seem a painful and unnatural effort. 

Again, I held my hand above his leg ; immediately 
the limb was attracted upwards. I continued to 
withdraw my hand ; and the leg was so much ele- 
vated as to form an acute angle with the body of the 
patient. Finally, I ran quickly away to the other 
end of the room; and the sleepwaker followed me 
quickly and unerringly. 

At another time, being in one of the folds of a 

screen, and Anna M in another, I put out my 

hand (but not beyond the projection of the screen), 
when instantly the patient's hand came round to 
meet mine. 

One evening, when I had mesmerised the same 
sleepwaker, and I was sitting near her, it occurred to 
me to inquire, " If my hand possesses so singular a 
property of attraction, what power of a similar kind 
may reside in my foot?" With this thought, I 
raised my foot, not in any unusual manner, but as if 
I were laying one leg over the other. The sole of 
my foot was then presented to the patient. In a very 
short time she began to turn round upon her chair. 
so as nearly to fall into the fire. Struck with this 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 155 

oddity. I made the sleepwaker rise, and again pre- 
sented my foot, when she commenced a series of reg- 
ular revolutions, from right to left, stopping always, 
when she had half completed the circle, with a bend 
and a dip, like that of the magnetic needle. The 
experiment repeated always produced the same re- 
sults. 

Again, when standing opposite to my patient, who 
was in an upright position, 1 began to turn round. 
She also seemed forced to revolve, hut in a direction 
contrary to mine. If I turned from left to right, she 
turned from right to loft, and vice versa* 

I tried the same experiments on other sieepw ;ikers. 

They also turned round when I did. and inversely to 
myself; but my foot, when presented to them, in- 
stead of making them revolve (a phenomenon ap- 
parently confined to Anna M ), seemed simply 

to repel them. I tried this with the sister of 'Theo- 
dore. Every time that I held OUt my hand she was 
attracted towards me : whenever I held out my foot, 
she was repelled ; and, by the alternate exercise of 
these two influences, she was kept oscillating to and 
fro like the pendulum of a clock. 

That the mesmeriser can create motion in the 
sleepwaker is not the only proof of the power that he 
possesses over the organization of the latter. He is 
also capable of paralyzing those motory agencies 
which he so much sways. But experiments of this 
kind should be undertaken with the greatest caution. 
Puysegur relates that, having tried, from curiosity, to 
paralyze the respiratory organs of a sleepwaker, he 
threw the patient into a state resembling death, 



156 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

which lasted for several hours. Dr. Sigmond has 
also reported the case of a lady whom., without in- 
tending it, he threw into an alarming state of insen- 
sibility, — a circumstance which (if I may venture to 
say so) is explained by the Doctor's own statement 
of his mesmeric principles. His words are — " It is 
upon the respiration that my efforts are directed ; and 
the principle is precisely that which is called ' steal- 
ing the breath away. 5 " 

The account is in "The Lancet " for Dec. 1837, 
and I have since had no opportunity of learning any 
of Dr. Sigmond's subsequent experiments. I do not, 
however, doubt but that experience has brought him 
to the same conclusion as myself ; — namely, that 
those motions and intentions of the mesmeriser which 
are most directed towards equalizing the influence 
he wields are the best ; and that we should above 
all avoid concentrating the action upon any vital 
part. Being fully persuaded of this, I have seldom 
ventured upon paralyzing the nerves of motion, save 
in the less important parts of the body, — as in the 
hand or arm, for instance. What led me to try 

such experiments at all w T as this : — Mr. K . of 

Antwerp, my first instructer in mesmerism, had ex- 
hibited to me a curious phenomenon which occurred 
whenever he closed the hand of one of his sleep- 
walkers over a piece of coin (silver or copper). The 
hand remained rigidly shut, and the patient seemed 
utterly incapable of opening it, until after the dis- 
persion of the mesmeric sleep. From a train of 
analogous reasoning, I was much inclined to believe 
that the coin had no more to do with the phenome- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 157 

non in question than the magnet and the baquet 
with the effects which Mesmer produced upon his 
early patients. I accordingly closed the hand of 

Mademoiselle M without the coin, and again 

with it. As I had anticipated, the result in both 
cases was the same. Moreover, I discovered that, 
by breathing on the patient's hand, I could always, 
and under any circumstances, restore it to its func- 
tions — in fact, that myself, and not the metal, was 
the depository of the paralyzing power, whatever it 
might be. 

I relate this in the hope that it may warn others, 
as it did me, against attributing, in mesmerism, 
effects to wrong causes. In all that regards mes- 
meric sleepwaking there is especial danger of falling 
into such an error, from the curious blending that it 
exhibits of human and of ineehaiiieal action; and 
never can we adjust the; balance properly, until the 
mesmeriser's influence over his patient be fully taken 
into account. 

A curious circumstance, attending the mesmeriser's 
power over the patient's organization is this : — 
When the two are in frequent mesmeric relationship, 
the phenomenon is carried forward into the natural 
state. This I found to be the case after I had often 

mesmerised Anna M and E. A . I could, 

at any time, fix the hand or arm of either of these 
persons in any position I pleased, and in all the 
rigidness of catalepsy. The means I used to pro- 
duce this effect were as follows : — I first placed the 
limb as I wished it to remain, and then brought the 
fingers of both hands into contact with it, at oppo- 
14 



158 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

site poles, as it were, and pointing to each other, so 
that, supposing they emanated a stream of galvanic 
or other influence, it would pass exactly through the 
part to be affected. The desired result did not 
ensue immediately, but in two or three minutes; 
and its intensity was proportioned to the length of 
time I acted on the limb. The patients described a 
sensation of gradual paralysis, and a deadness. as 
when a leg or arm, in common parlance, goes to 
sleep. At length a spasmodic contraction of the 
muscles took place : the hand looked white and 
bloodless, and the fingers unnaturally rigid. To the 
touch they seemed as chords that are pulled tight; 
and, if the numbness continued, they lost all feeling. 
No force, short of what would have produced me- 
chanical injury, could undo them. On one occasion, 
I placed the arm of E. A. in a position so twisted 
and constrained, that it was not possible for him to 
oppose much voluntary force to any one's efforts to 
pull it down ; yet, when once paralyzed, there was not 
a person present who could stir it. It offered the re- 
sistance of marble. Moreover, this patient was not in 
the least imaginative, and ridiculed the idea that fancy 
could produce the phenomenon in question. When I 
wished to restore motion to a limb thus paralyzed I 
breathed on it, and made some magnetic passes down 
it, accompanied sometimes by slight friction. The re- 
turn of life and feeling was gradual as their loss, and 
w T as accompanied by those tinglings called pins and 
needles. A slight numbness was generally felt for some 

time after the experiment. Once I persuaded E. A 

to permit me to try whether, in his waking state. I 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 159 

could prevent him from opening his eyes. The ex- 
periment was perfectly successful. By pressing down 
the upper eyelid with a finger of one hand, and plac- 
ing a finger of the other upon the lower lid, 1 eould 

so influence the levator muscle as (after withdrawing 

m\ hands; to keep either eye closed while the other 
was wide open. The patient could not, in general, 

shut his light eye without also shutting the left. 

I have now taken a review 6f the condition 
of the bodily organs, and of the motive powers, 
under mesmeric sleepwaking, being at the same time 

fully aware how much is left to he performed by abler 
hands than mine. I am no physician : and a very 
minute inquiry into the physical state of mesmeric 
patients is not my province. I. however, seriously 
recommend to all who study medicine as a profes- 
sion, especiallj to the younger aspirants in this 
branch of science, (since fAey, at least, are not 
around'd and rooted in antique prejudices,) to pay 
attention to mesmerism, after the plan that I have 
laid down ; i. c. to ascertain, during its operation, 
the exact and peculiar state of every organ and func- 
tion of the human body. 

By mesmerism we best dissect man. whether men- 
tally or physically ; and. if ever the vital influences 
are to be understood, it is not by anatomizing the 
dead, or by torturing the living, but by observation 
of our fellow-beings when in the state we call mes- 
meric. 

I now proceed to offer some remarks upon the 
mental condition of patients under mesmeric sleep- 
waking, considering the soul in its moral, intellectual, 
and sensitive capacities. 



160 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

First, as regards our moral being : — 

That the state of mesmeric sleepwaking is a rise 
in man's nature, no one, who has been conversant 
with it, can doubt. 

Separated from the usual action of the senses, the 
mind appears to gain juster notions, to have quite a 
new sense of spiritual things, and to be lifted nearer 
to the fountain of all good and of all truth. The 
great indication of this elevated state of feeling is a 
horror of falsehood, which I have found common to 
all sleepwakers. Sincerity is their especial charac- 
teristics; they cannot feign or flatter: they seem to 
be taken out of common life, with all its heartless 
forms and plausible conventions. 

I proceed, by one or two instances, to show how 
forcibly sleepwakers are impelled to speak the thing 
that is, and to clear their consciences of that dissimu- 
lation which clings so much to man in his natural 
state. 

During the Antwerp carnival, a lady, who took a 
sincere interest in Anna M.'s welfare, advised her not 
to go to the masked ball, which is usually given at 
that season. The night after the ball. Anna came 
to be mesmerised, and, though complaining of fatigue, 
would not own that she had acted in opposition to the 
advice that she had received. When, however, in 
sleepwaking, she acknowledged, of her own accord, 
that she had been at the masked ball, and said 
that she felt she had done wrong in practising con- 
cealment, though her motive had been to avoid giv- 
ing pain to her kind monitress. 

A similar instance of candid confession occurred 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 161 

in E. A. I had given him a bottle of lotion for his 
eyes, which were weak at the time: he took it home 
with him ; and a day or two afterwards, in reply to my 
inquiries as to the benefit received, answered in some 
prevaricating way. bo as to make me suppose that he 
had used the lotion to advantage. Subsequently, 
however, being in ipesm* ric sleepwaking, he said. 
quite voluntarily, " There is something that 1 wish 
to tell yon. In going home the other night 1 broke 
that bottle which you gave me, 1 feared von would 

be angT] if you knew this, and 1 dared not own it 

when awake : but now 1 feel that J did not act 

rightly." 

In the mesmeric state, the character of this sleep- 
waker presented generally a strong contrast to its 
waking exhibition. Good talents and a good dispo- 
sition had. in him, been warped by an unfortunate 
education : and. young as he was, he had imbibed at 

Pans certain infidel opinions, of the worst kind, 
which he scarcely studied to conceal. 1 asked him 
once, in his waking state, what he thought became 
of ns after death ; and his answer was, u DeS qu'on 
est mort, on n'e-t phis rien du tout." 

This extreme ignorance on most subjects was ac- 
companied by a vain belief that he knew a irood 
deal: and if one stated to him the commonest facts 
of philosophy, (the distance of the sun from the 
earth, for example,) he suspected a design of playing 
upon his credulity, and entrenched himself in abso- 
lute unbelief. In sleepwaking all this was changed. 
His ideas of the mind were correct, and singularly 
opposed to the material views he took of all ques- 

14* 



162 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

lions when in the waking state. He once chided 
me for calling the soul " une chose ; " and said, " Ce 
n'est pas une chose, — c'est une pensee." " Can the 
soul ever die ? " I asked. "Certainly not. It is the 
soul, which is the only true existence, and which 
gives existence to all we apprehend." " Whence 
came the soul ? " " From God, who, by his thoughts, 
created the universe." His words were, " L'ame 
provient de Dieu, qui a crce Funivers par sa pensee." 
"Is there a future punishment for evil-doers:'' 
" Undoubtedly, a great one." "In what will it con- 
sist? " "In seeing themselves as they are, and God 
as he is." 

On another occasion, I mesmerised E. A., when a 
lady of great talents and feeling, and an author, well 
known to English literature, were present. The 
latter was suffering under a severe domestic affliction. 
He had recently lost a beloved daughter ; and the 
tone of mind, induced by that bereavement, naturally 
inclined him to question the sleepwaker on subjects 

relative to a future state. In order that Mr. 

might speak with the greater freedom, I placed him 
" en rapport," as it is called, with E. A., and took 
but little part in the conversation that ensued. The 
conversation itself I cannot accurately detail ; but the 
general impression that it left upon my mind can 
never be effaced. The sleepwaker rose into elo- 
quence which seemed unearthly. It was simple — 
it was beautiful — it was like an inspiration. He 
spoke of the never-dying nature of the soul : of its 
ransomed beatitude ; of its progress through various 
eras of existence, during which he asserted (for here 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 163 

I remember his very words), " Elle conserve la me- 
moire du passe, et des amities faites sur la terre ; et 
el e a 1'envie de revoir oeuxqu'ellea cheris autrefois. 
Tout le bien de Tame s*en va avec elle, et dure aprse 
la mort ; et le> justefl qui se sont plena's ici bas 
seront relink devant Dieu." Every one present 
was affected — some even to tears. It was, in- 
deed, beautiful to see the young, prophet — whose 
countenance had retaken an expression of candor 
and of childish innocence — speaking so calmly the 
words of holiness and of comfort, and the older lis- 
tener humbly stooping to drink of the waters of re- 
freshment from so lowly a source. 

The same aleepwaker, thoroughly unsentimental in 
his natural state seemed always, when mesmerised, 
to take a pleasure in losing himself in imaginations 
of another world. Beautiful are the things he has 
said to me respecting the soul's recognition of those 
it loved on earth, and of the privilege of departed 
friends to watch over the objects of their solicitude 
while toiling through the pilgrimage of life ; but were 
I particularly to record these speculations, as they 
would be called, I should probably be deemed a vis- 
ionary, or branded as an enthusiast. It is enough to 
say that, under mesmeric sleep waking, all the hard 
incredulity which characterized E. A. when awake, 
was gone. His wilfulness was become submission ; 
his pride, humility ; and, in precise proportion as he 
seemed to know more, he appeared to esteem himself 
less. Often would he regret the errors of his waking 
hours, and speak of his natural state as of an exist- 
ence apart. Often would he exclaim, in sleepwak- 



164 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

ing, " How I wish I could always see things as I do 
now ! " There is not a person who saw him in the 
mesmeric state but remarked the change for the bet- 
ter that his physiognomy underwent. His affections 
also were enlarged. Egotistical in general, and dis- 
playing but little sensibility, he, in the mesmeric 
state, showed all the warmth of a kind-hearted nature. 
Shortly before leaving me I mesmerised him. Im- 
mediately on passing into sleepwaking his counte- 
nance assumed an expression of the deepest sorrow, 
and he seemed scarcely able to speak. When askec 
the cause of his sadness, he said, " I am going away : 
how deeply I feel it ! " Restored to his waking state, 
he laughed, and talked, and seemed as unconcernec 
as usual. 

That in the mesmeric state the mind's sensibility 
is exalted and refined, I had also a proof, when one 

day I was reading to Mademoiselle M (then in 

sleepwaking) Wordsworth's touching poem of Lucy 
Gray. Utterly insensible to poetry in her waking 
state, she at that time felt all its charms : her coun- 
tenance varied with emotion ; she watched the pro- 
gress of the little story with the deepest interest ; and 
when I arrived at the stanza — 

" The storm came on before its time ; 

She wandered up and down; 

And many a hill did Lucy climb, 

But never reached the town." 

she burst into a passion of tears, and cried out. " Oh ! 
cease, cease ! I can bear it no longer." 

Yet, that this increased sensibility was regulated 
by considerable self-control appeared manifestly on a 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 165 

certain occasion, when some one, placed " en rap- 
port " with her in sleepwaking, made an unfortunate 
allusion to the death of a person to whom Mademoi- 
selle M. had been strongly attached. She w r ept 
much, but, seeing me uneasy, said, " Do not mind, 
sir, I will control myself:** which she accordingly 
did, and by a moral effort she resumed her tran- 
quillity. 

Another feature of the moral state in mesmerism 
is a tendency to replace the conventional forms of 
the world by a frank exhibition of general good will 
and cordial regard to all men. Justinus Kerner (in 
his u Leherin von Prevorst," published at Stutgart 
and Tubingen, 1832,) relates that the sleepwaker, to 
whom he has given the above high-sounding appella- 
tion, would never, in the ine>merie state, address any 
one in the third person plural, which is the ceremo- 
nial manner of speaking in Germany ; but always in 
the second person singular, which the Germans con- 
sider as expressive of intimacy and affection. I have 
observed something of the same kind in those sleep- 
wakers who have come under my notice. E. A. was 
once thrown into the mesmeric state in the presence 
of a gentleman whom, as his superior in age and 
station in society, he regarded with the greatest 
respect. Having written, as requested, some music 
for this gentleman, he inscribed it thus : — " A mon 
cher V. O." It is curious to compare this familiar 
dedication with those which were written in his 
waking state, where every title was given its due 
weight, and nothing was presented save " avec les 
hommages les plus respectueuses." 



166 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

A state of mind so simple, so religious, so tender, 
yet so pure, is in itself a refutation of the charge of 
immorality, which they who lack the charity that 
hopes and believes the best have attempted to bring 
against mesmerism. If to this be added the absolute 
deadness of corporeal sensation which Ihave shown 
to accompany mesmeric sleepwaking, there will be a 
manifest absurdity in the supposition that it is (as 
some one called it) a mere " voluptuous juggle," — 
an affair of the senses and of sexual feeling. 

The attraction towards the mesmeriser, testified by 
the patient, which has, perhaps, contributed to give 
birth to this monstrous idea, is of a nature totally 
distinct from the promptings of passion. If compared 
to any love, it must be likened to self-love; for it 
seems to result from that identification of the vital 
and nervous system of the two parties of which I 
have already given many examples, and which admits 
of still further illustration. For instance, a gentle- 
man, whom I was mesmerising for the first time, 
asked me, when I had laid my hand on his forehead, 
whether he felt his own hand or mine placed there, 
declaring himself wholly unable to decide. Anna 

M , when I have been suffering from a sensation 

of cold, has not only complained of being chilly, but 
has said, u Will you warm yourself for me V Once 
when (unknown to her) I had a blister on my side, 
I observed that, during sleepwaking, she constantly 
carried her hand to her own side. I asked her why 
she did this, and she said, " There is something there 
that pains me, as if the skin were torn off." At 
another time, when I was thirsty, a sleepwaker com- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 167 

plained also of thirst. I offered to give her some 
water, but she said, " No ; you must drink for me" 
My thirst being quenched, the sleepwaker's uneasi- 
ness was removed. The patient, also, during mes- 
merism, adopts, to a certain extent, the mesmeriser's 

likings and dislikings. E. A , in his natural 

state, was very fond of the smell of heliotrope, which 
I found too sickly for my taste ; but in sleep waking, 
when, through me, he was made to smell it, he found 
the odor unpleasing. 

When we consider these and other proofs dis- 
played by sleepwakers of sensitive and motive sym- 
pathy with their mesmeriser ; when we reflect that 
they are actually heedless of injuries inflicted on 
themselves, but tremblingly alive to all that he is 
made to suffer ; we may well imagine that he stands 
to them in a very peculiar and vital relation : nor 
can it seem wonderful that, when severed from him, 
they should acknowledge a schism in their being, and 
seem out of all unity with themselves. Besides, 
several circumstances prove how remote from sexual 
feeling is the one in question. In the first place, it 
is exhibited equally by every mesmerised person, with- 
out respeet of age, sex or character. The cold and 
the stubborn are subjugated by it as effectually as 
the warm and the yielding : the pride of talent 
exempts not from this despotism, neither does the 
simple innocence of childhood. Never have I seen 
its force more strongly exemplified than in the case 

of a sister of Anna M , a child of nine or ten 

years of age. Having once left her on a sofa in the 
mesmeric state, while I went to take some tea at a 



168 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

table which stood near, I heard, after I had been 
away about five minutes, low stifled sobs proceeding 
from my little patient. I hastened to her and found 
her crying. Being asked by me the cause of this 
distress, she replied, " Because you staid so long 
away. It makes me suffer so much." 

Again, the attraction manifested by patients to- 
wards their mesmeriser is not in the least modified by 
circumstances, or by the relation of the parties to 
each other ; and it is openly exhibited by those whom 
I have shown to be in a state of high moral feeling. 

Nothing can be more evident than that it is an 
instinct, not a passion : the springs of life are touched, 
and the powerful impulse of self-preservation is set 
in play. So, also, the repulsion from all others than 
the mesmeriser is but a measure of the attractive 
force which draws the patient there, where he exists 
even more than in himself. Illustrative of this phy- 
sical necessity, I may bring forward a circumstance 
which was related to me by an eye-witness, whose 
word I have never had reason to doubt. A young 
man, mesmerised for the first time, became unwell 
under the extraordinary stimulus of mesmerism, 
which sometimes, if unskilfully applied, does affect 
persons unpleasantly. His mesmeriser, was, in fact, 
inexperienced in his art ; and, becoming alarmed at 
the result of his operations, attempted to quit the 
room. The consequences of this injudicious conduct 
were fearful. The patient became furious, and 
actually tore his own clothes and the hangings of 
the apartment. Had his mesmeriser succeeded in 
leaving him, he might have suffered seriously ; but 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 169 

by good fortune, a more experienced mesmeriser, who 
was present, forced back the inexpert practitioner, 
and instructed him how to allay the tempest of 
mental and bodily agitation which he had so unwit- 
tingly provoked. This may serve as a general type 
of the Kind of feeling exhibited by patients towards 
their mesmerisers ; and with this the language of 
sleepwakers themselves is in exact accordance. A 

gentleman, who saw K. A mesmerised by me, 

said to him, " Vous aimer bien d'etre avec Monsieur." 
To which the sleepwaker replied, " Oui, mais pas tou- 
jours comme a. present. IXaiitreibis, je peux le quit- 
ter, et je ne sens rien ; maintenanl je ne pouvais pas le 
quitter, quand m'me je le voudrais." In the same 

manner. Anna M , who vraa exceedingly fond of 

my wife, could not quit me to go to her. when in the 
mesmeric state Being good-humoredly rallied upon 
this. >\u> said. " Vou know, dear lady, how much I 
love you, and that the feeling I have tor my mesmer- 
iser is sincere respect. That which keeps me near 
him now is quite different from any affection : it is 
not that I would not wish to come to you, but ab- 
solutely I cannot, unless my mesmeriser comes too." 
When seated between us both she declared herself 
quite happy. Nevertheless, it was necessary even 
for my wife to approach her, when mesmerised, with 
caution. Touching her once suddenly, without 
having been placed properly " en rapport " with 
her, she produced in the patient a violent fit of shiv- 
ering. 

But it may still be objected, that the mesmeriser, 
if so disposed, may make a wrong use of the influ- 

15 



170 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

ence which he possesses over the patient. Possibly : 
for, as I have once before remarked, all power is ca- 
pable of abuse. A bad physician may employ his 
knowledge of drugs to the worst purposes ; but are 
we therefore to have no physicians ? And is mes- 
merism, because dangerous in evil hands, not to be 
consigned to any hands at all ? There are some who 
wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction and that 
of others ; but shall the Scriptures not be preached ? 
A pursuit, too, like mesmerism, which, so far from 
conducting to gain or glory, subjects its votaries to a 
species of martyrdom, holds out but few temptations 
to the base minded. Besides, the fault rests with 
mesmeric patients themselves, if they give up their 
powers of self-control to evil, or even doubtful, guid- 
ance, or, indeed, to any foreign guidance whatever, 
unless before proper witnesses. 

Exercised judiciously, there is not a doubt that 
mesmerism might be made an important instrument 
of moral good to man, since it not only tends natur- 
ally to elevate the mind above sensual desires and 
material objects for the time being, but even after 
its immediate influence has passed away. A mes- 
meriser can always so strengthen the virtuous ten- 
dencies developed by his patient in sleepwaking, as 
to prolong them, as it were, into the waking state. 

Often has E. A entreated me, when I have given 

him good advice in the mesmeric sleep, to impress it 
in such a manner upon his mind as that it might in- 
fluence him, even though imperceptibly, when awake. 
Moreover, it is a curious fact that, if the mesmeriser 
tells his patient to abstain from any thing at a certain 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 171 

time — even from that of which he may be most 
fond — the latter acts upon the injunction, in his 
natural state, without being aware of the springs 
that impel his conduct. To what beneficial uses this 
peculiar influence might be rendered subservient I 
need not suggest ; nor how effectually it might wean 
persons from bad habits, by rendering them positively 
averse to the sins that most easily beset them. 

That a proportionable increase of the intellectual 
powers should accompany so marked a development 
of the moral will not seem surprising, if we reflect 
that every faculty of our being plays, as it were, into 
the hands of the other; and that a rise in moral 
feeling almost presupposes a rise in intellectual dig- 
nity. If it be granted that "want of decency is want 
of sense/' it may also be conceded that a want of 
moral perceptions generally is the produce and ac- 
companiment of a degraded intellect. The increased 
sincerity which persons manifest in the mesmeric state 
would alone pronounce it the parent of a quickened 
reason. They perceive all the irrationality of false- 
hood. Other proofs, however, of the sleepwaker's 
advance in intellect are by no means wanting. 

He can discuss subjects which, in the waking state, 
are far beyond the scope of his capacity, and solve 
questions which, at other times, are to him as an un- 
known tongue. I observed this especially in the case 

of E. A . His habitual confusion of thought 

was changed, during sleepwaking, into justness of 
apprehension ; to indulge in abstract speculations 
seemed almost a feature of his condition ; and he 
displayed, in this development of his nature, a pecu- 



172 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

liar acuteness of remark which looked like intuitive 
sagacity. He apprehended with ease, and learnt 
with quickness. A hint was sufficient to put him in 
possession of a subject. 

But it is especially by the improved condition of 
the memory, in the mesmeric state, that the general 
strengthening of the intellectual powers may be esti- 
mated. For is not, in truth, memory the life and 
breath of the mind, without whose quickening inspi- 
ration all the elements of thinking were but as so 
much dry dust ? Is it not our identity which links 
every event wherein we have been concerned, every 
fragment of knowledge and of moral feeling which 
has come to us either from the external world or the 
universe of our own minds, into one harmonious and 
intelligible whole ? It is true that memory, without 
the reasoning faculties, were but a vain gift ; but it 
is equally true that, without memory, all the faculties 
in which we glory were entirely worthless. Their 
simplest exercise presupposes its abiding presence. 
It is the measure of our attention, as attention itself 
is the measure of the mind's strength or weakness. 

That this important power is largely developed 
under mesmeric sleepwaking is a fact to which par- 
ticular attention should be given ; since it explains. 
in a natural way, certain phenomena which too many 
of the friends of mesmerism wonder over as miracu- 
lous, and which, consequently, too many of its ad- 
versaries reject as false. How much injury this pre- 
sentation of startling circumstances, unaccompanied 
by any rational solution, has caused to mesmerism 
may be estimated by a comparison of the reception 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 173 

given to a fact, when rationally set forth by a philos- 
opher, with that which it receives when wildly stated 
by an enthusiast. Many of the stories told by the 
judicious, and frankly accepted by the world in gen- 
eral, are every whit aa wonderful as the tales of mes- 
meric dair-voyance which so shock the incredulous; 
— but then they are otherwise presented^ and charm 
us by being seen through the cleat glass of nature, 
instead of coming to us colored bj the Claude Lor- 
raine medium of the imagination. A proof of this 
assertion may be found in the high estimation which 
Dr. Abercrombie's work on the Intellectual Powers 
so justly enjoys. The work itself is lull of interest- 
ing and remarkable anecdotes, many of them espe- 
cially relating to auto-sleepwajking — yet who dreams 
of doubting these! And \\h\ ? They are naturally 
and philosophically treated. For in>tance : — the 
author relates that a girl, who was constitutionally a 
sleepwalker, ignorant, and of the lowest rank, " has 
been known to conjugate correctly Latin verbs, which 
she had probably /ward in the school room of the family ; 
and she was once heard to speak several sentences 
very correctly in French ; at the same time stating 
that she heard them from a foreign gentleman, whom 
she had met accidentally in a shop." Now, conceive 
the story to have been told without the sentences 
which I have marked by italics, and the mere work- 
ings of memory are forthwith magnified into a mirac- 
ulous gift of tongues, which we regard with quite 
other feelings than the present cautious and instruc- 
tive statement. We cannot, then, be too guarded in 
our views of the faculties displayed by sleepwakers. 
15* 



174 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

The least hint of a thing, previously heard and for- 
gotten while awake, will serve them, in the mesmeric 
state, as a clue to knowledge that shall seem super- 
natural ; but a little investigation will often clear up 
the apparent miracle ; and the principle, once ascer- 
tained, may be extended even to cases which baffle 
our most accurate research. 

The memory of Anna M was much developed 

during mesmeric sleepwaking. All the reminiscences 
of her childish years seemed to recur to her mind ; 
and thence she was enabled to show an acquaintance 
with the past histories of the inhabitants of her native 
town, which, in primitive times, would have been by 
no means to her advantage. Under James the First 
she would infallibly have been burnt for a witch. 

Often, in her mesmeric state, she recalled to the 
minds of persons, who had perhaps forgotten that 
they had ever seen her, particular circumstances, with 
which they imagined none but themselves could be 
acquainted. On one occasion especially, I remember 
a person entering the room while she was in mesmeric 
sleepwaking and had her eyes perfectly closed. His 
name was not mentioned ; but, having been placed 
" en rapport " with him, she recognised him, by the 
voice alone, as an individual whom she had known in 
her very early childhood, but had not met with since. 
She named him, and brought back to his recollection 
many minute particulars relating to his family and to 
himself. On awaking, she was much surprised to 
see another person added to our party, and could by 
no effort of memory (even after he had spoken") make 
him appear other than a perfect stranger to her. It 






MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 175 

was not until he had declared himself, and, on his 
part, recalled to her sundry circumstances, that she 
could remember ever to have seen him. Yet, even 
then, the greater part of the particulars, with which 
in mesmerism she seemed so fully acquainted, could 
by no means be restored to her remembrance. 

Another time, the same sleepwaker. being asked 
to write some Flemish poetry from memory, noted 
down with a pencil two lines, which, on awaking, 
(though we told her the first words of the distich), 
she could not repeat. Being shown the lines, she at 
length recognised, by their general sense, something 
which she had heard as a child. In mesmeric sleep- 
waking, Anna M displayed a greater aptitude to 

learn than in her waking state. I had only recited 
to her a little poem of Goldsmith's, beginning, " Oh, 

memory ! thou loud deceiver/' twice over, when she 
was already able to repeat it correctly. 

E. A manifested a similar increase of mental 

retentiveness, more remarkable perhaps, inasmuch as 
his memory (more from neglect, I imagine, than 
from natural incapacity) was singularly defective. 
We have tried him in mesmeric sleepwaking with 
the hardest phrases and technical expressions which 
the English tongue (of which he knew very little) 
could furnish ; and, on one occasion, a gentleman, 
who had traveled in the East, supplied him with a 
long and strange Turkish word, which he caught 
directly with the greatest ease. 

This sleepwaker played beautifully on the flute, 
and was accustomed often to improvise upon that in- 
strument with all the musical genius that he possess- 



176 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 



ed ; but the charming strain, once uttered, was lost 
for ever. He could not repeat one of his extempore 
compositions. One day, I had been forced to reprove 
him for some fault, when, taking his flute, he poured 
forth some melancholy notes which seemed to express 
regret and penitence. I begged him to repeat the 
touching air, but it had wholly passed from his re- 
membrance. Subsequently, when he was in mes- 
meric sleepwaking, it occurred to me to ask him if 
he could then write down the composition that so 
much pleased me. Instantly he seized music-paper 
and a pen, and wrote down the air which I here sub- 
join, and which, as far as my own memory can deter- 
mine, is precisely the same as that which I had heard 
two days before. 

POUR LA FLUTE. 




t^^B 







m 




ppp echo 






~-*0 a 



fes^w 



o=P=pg= 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 



177 




*=mm 



Bi . '.gT i ftfr 




rttenuto 



Another proof of increased memory given by this 
sleepwaker was his comprehending and speaking 
English (which otherwise he was remarkably slow to 
learn) far better in the mesmeric than in the natural 
state. 

A circumstance to be remarked, as showing a con- 
nection between the mesmeric and the common sleep, 
is this — sleepwakers will remember those nocturnal 
dreams which they can by no means recall when 

waking. I once asked Anna M if she could 

recollect any thing in sleepwaking which, out of it, 
she had forgotten. She replied. "-Certainly, many 
things; and just now I clearly remember something 
which I wished to recollect when I was awake, but 
could not. It is a dream which I had on Sunday 
night. (She said this on Wednesday, 14th Februa- 
ry, 1838.) I screamed out in my sleep, and alarmed 
my mother ; but I could not call to mind what I had 
been dreaming about : now, however, I know what 



178 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

it was. I thought that a very frightful old woman 
entered the room : she was dressed in scarlet, and 
had a white fillet bound across her forehead. She 
came slowly in, and, coming up to me in bed, laid 
her hand upon my chest. I tried to scream, but 
could not : at last, however, I screamed, and woke 
my mother." Afterwards, when the sleepwaker had 
returned to her natural state, she was questioned 
about the dream ; but it had again past from her 
memory. Wishing to establish the circumstance by 
as much evidence as possible, I took an opportunity 
of speaking to her mother on the subject, when the 
latter corroborated all that Anna had affirmed, and 
added, that her daughter was in the habit of relating 
her dreams to her family at breakfast ; but of this 
particular one she had been able to give no account. 
E. A. could also, in sleepwaking, recall the visions 
of the night, which had gone from him as the dream 
from the Babylonian monarch. Moreover, he had 
been, as a child, a natural sleepwaker, and he assur- 
ed me, when in the mesmeric state, that all the 
minutest circumstances of his early sleepwaking 
recurred to him. When asked if the mind ever 
ceased to think in slumber, he replied, " Never for 
an instant ; the soul is wise, and learns much during 
sleep. It reflects on all it has seen and heard, and 
profits more by this than in the daytime. We can- 
not, indeed, be aware of this, because we are in a 
different state when waking, and forget what we 
think of by night. Yet, he continued, have you not 
remarked that, if you read a thing over-night, you 
remember it better on awaking the next morning ? 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 179 

This is the fruit of the soul's labor (c'est le fruit du 
travail de Tame), though we do not know whence it 
comes." Asked again about dreams, he replied, 
" In general they are a kind of recreation of the soul, 
an exercise of ita inventive faculty ; but we are only 
acquainted with the results. As a carpenter takes a 
tree, and saws it into boards, and then from those 
boards constructs something which he had previously 
determined, so the soul arranges the meehanisni of 
the brain to form a dream : — and the dream itself, 
which we imagine to last a longtime, passes, in fact, 
with inconceivable rapidity. It only occupies the 
moment immediately previous to our waking. Other 
dreams, Bgain, are, as it were, forced upon the soul 
by something disordered in the brain : but they 
all agree in this — they immediately precede our 
waking." 

I relate the above, as curiously consonant with a 
circumstance in the life of Lavalette. He had in 
prison a horrible dream, in which he saw an infernal 
procession pass by his cell. Whole armies seemed to 
defile before him ; but the riders were all skeletons, 
and the horses, stripped of their skins, presented a 
mass of raw and bleeding flesh. A clanking of 
chains accompanied the terrific vision, which seemed 
to be of infinite duration. He was awakened by the 
gaoler entering his dungeon, when he found that the 
dream, which had been an " eternity to thought," 
was, in reality, the impression of a moment, caused 
by the dropping of the chains in unfastening his 
door. 

The last phenomenon of memory, which may here 



180 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

be mentioned as regarding the sleepwaker alone, is 
that, when the mesmeric sleep is perfect, the subse- 
quent oblivion is perfect too. Of the truth of this 
fact, it has been generally asserted that there is no 
other assurance than the allegations of the sleep- 
wakers themselves. I cannot concede this point. 
Place a mesmeric patient under circumstances differ- 
ent to those in which he went to sleep, but without 
hinting that you expect any display of surprise on 
his part, and he must be shrewd indeed, as well as a 
consummate actor, if he can counterfeit to the life 
such an astonishment on waking as he must exhibit 
naturally, supposing him really to have forgotten the 

events of his sleepwaking. Mademoiselle M , 

under circumstances the more remarkable, because 
not at all arranged for the specific purpose, was once 
evidently almost alarmed into illness by finding her- 
self in a different apartment (whither, it may be 
remembered, she had been brought to see an invalid 
lady) from that in which she had been mesmerised. 
She started, shuddered, looked wildly around her, 
exclaiming, " Good God ! what is this ? How did I 
come here? This is too much;" and was thrown 
into a fit of trembling which we had much difficulty 
to allay. 

Again, supposing a sleepwaker to be under the 
same roof with yourself, his mesmeriser, and exposed 
to your constant observation, the chances are that, if 
he feigns, he will sometimes be caught tripping. A 
deceiver cannot be always on his guard : and what a 
power of memory does it presuppose in the fictitious 
sleepwaker to imagine that he can arrange and 






MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 181 

separate in his own mind those circumstances of 
which he may or may not speak ! Passing a great 
portion of his time in sleepwaking, will it not be 
difficult, nay impossible, for him never to advert to 
that which has engaged his attention so much and 
has formed, indeed, half his life ? I conceive, then, 
that when I assert that, during four months, E. A. 
was staying in my house, and constantly mesmerised 
by myself, with the eyes of a whole family placed in 
guard upon him, yet that never, in a single instance, 
he was known to mingle his mesmeric with his 
ordinary existence by word or action, I do, in fact, 
show that the assertions of sleepwakers, are not the 
sole evidence that they actually forget the occurren- 
ces of their mesmeric state. We have tried in every 
possible way to put this to the test ; we have plotted 
against the sleepwaker. as if. indeed, we had wished 
to convict him of imposition on this point ; we have 
laid traps for him in conversation ; but the most 
searching ordeal only served to convince us of his 
sincerity. Be it observed, moreover, that, in his 
mesmeric state, I conversed with him frequently on 
subjects which he was incapable of discussing in his 
waking hours, and that, after the sleepwaking was 
past, I found him, with respect to the same subjects, 
as unenlightened as ever. Now I know from his 
character that, had he retained any little piece of 
information acquired in his mesmeric state, he could 
not have resisted the temptation of displaying it, at 
some time or other, for our edification and astonish- 
ment. What adds to the probability of this is that, 
his memory being in some respects defective, he 
16 



182 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

would often retail to persons the very story, or the 
very bit of knowledge, which he had learned from 
themselves, with a perfect unconsciousness that he 
was only giving back a man his own. Besides, he 
talked much and reflected little ; so that, had he 
wished to feign oblivion of his mesmeric state, every 
chance was against the success of his attempt. 
Surely all these proofs presumptive (on which I have 
dwelt the more, because arguments of this nature 
seem hitherto to have been withheld) amount nearly 
to proof positive that sleepwaking has its own memo- 
ry and its own consciousness, which do not overpass 
the boundaries of its duration. 

The fact that, under peculiar conditions, we may 
enjoy the exercise of all our faculties, yet retain no 
recollection of having done so, may be applied, as I 
imagine, to the solution of many curious questions in 
metaphysics — such as that one of Locke's," Whether 
the soul thinks always?" which that great philosopher 
has decided in the negative, on the ground that after- 
consciousness is the sole testimony we can have of 
the mind's activity; and that, since we are by no 
means conscious that we think always, we ought not 
to assume that we do think always. But in some 
cases, and most especially in that of mesmeric sleep- 
waking, we are forced to admit, for the activity of 
our minds, an evidence which Locke has omitted to 
notice ; namely, the testimony of our fellow-beings 
(a testimony, indeed, on which we build half our 
knowledge), assuring us that the state which, once 
ended, appears a blank to us, was marked by energy 
and activity of the highest order. Hence, setting 



i 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 183 

aside our own want of memory of our past intelli- 
gence, as an inadequate proof that such intelligence 
never existed, we manifestly arrive at a presumption 
that what we have forgotten in one case we may 
have forgotten in many more : and that the mind 
is probably always active, though we cannot always 
assure ourselves of its activity. Such a probability 
will be peculiarly grateful to those who deem that 
ideas are constitutive of the mind, and that Locke 
was fundamentally wrong when he called "thinking 
the action and not the essence of the soul ;" being so 
far misled, by a false analogy between things material 
and things spiritual, as to conceive " that the per- 
ception of ideas is to the soul what motion is to the 
body." They who would not 

" 1.. 

Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 

TheM tli >nghta tint vrandex through eternity," 

yet who believe that to cease to think is to cease to 
be, must rejoice in all that tends to prove the con- 
tinuity of thought, its unceasing and inexpressible 
activity. It is also remarkable that the state; of mes- 
meric Bleepwaking, though one of oblivion, leaves 
always, as I have observed, a sort of agreeable savor 
on the mind, which renders persons of every age, 
sex, and temperament, desirous to enter it again. It 
has appeared to me as if the soul rejoiced in it, as in 
an element to which it was " native and endued," 
and eagerly pursued it, as a foretaste of its develop- 
ment through eternity. We might also enter upon 
some curious speculations, suggested by this severing 



184 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

of existences ; this forgetfulness in one state of that 
which we have done in another. It is an answer to 
our inquiry, whether Lazarus, when restored to the 
body, brought back with him the secrets of another 
world ; it leads us to conjecture that they, who have 
seemed dead, yet have been recalled to this morbid 
existence, may have visited the world of shadows, 
although they know it not. 1 It makes the river Lethe 
seem no fable, and half realizes to us the inspired 
words of the poet : — 

u Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
The soul, that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar." 

In a practically religious point of view, also, the 
phenomena regarding memory, under mesmeric sleep- 
waking, are full of instruction. The prodigious in- 
crease in this state of the recollective powers seems 
to indicate that, in our normal existence, they are 
but partially developed ; and that hence the moral- 
ist's suggestion, that all our lives, with all their good 
and evil, will, in some future era of being, be spread 
before us as an open scroll, is not to be slighted as a 
fiction, but to be duly regarded as a probability, of 
which we have the presumptive evidence in our own 
hands. I proceed to speak of phenomena of memo- 
ry in the sleepwaker, resulting from the mesmeriser's 
influence. 

1st. Strange and inexplicable as the fact may seem, 
it is undoubtedly true that the mesmeriser has the 

1 I have a relation who lay for twenty-four hours in a state of 
seeming death, and who was wept for as dead. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 185 

power of impressing some things upon the memory 
of his patient, in such a manner as that the latter 
shall retain them, and them alone, on awaking. 
Thus, at my desire, E. A. used to remember English 
words which 1 had taught him during his sleepwaking. 
Persons who were present when he was mesmerised 
would amuse themselves by proposing to him, through 
me. words the most difficult for a foreigner to pro- 
nounce : such, for instance, as "boatswain's whis- 
tle/' which a gentleman one day gave him as a 
puzzle, yet which lie repeated correctly, and retained 
after his sleepwakklg. Anna M. when mesmerised, 
if asked to remember anything, used to tap her fore- 
head on either side, jusl where she bad two singular 
prominences, and say, " I will do my best to fi.\ it in 
my brain/ 5 After this she always recollected what 

she had been desired to retain. I did not find, how- 
ever, this faculty extend to circumstances connected 
with the unusual mode of sensation apparently opened 
to sleepwakers, Even if so requested, neither E.'A. 

nor Anna M. could give nny account, on awaking, of 

their perceptions during mesmerism, nor how objects 

were presented to their minds. The subjects adapted 

to their after-memory seemed to be chiefly of a verbal 
nature, such as a few line- of poetry, or the particu- 
lar day fixed lor a subsequent mesmerisation. 

This possibility of making sleepwakers remember 
what they have learned in the mesmeric state (and 
learned, too. with superior ease and quickness) might, 
I imagine, be turned to important uses. I have read, 
though where I have forgotten, of a lady who ac- 
quired a new language through mesmeric recollec- 
1G* 



186 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

tion ; and my experience inclines me to believe tha. 
such might be the case. 

2dly. The mesmeriser, by the expression of his 
desire, can make the patient remember certain things 
at a particular time, subsequent to sleepwaking, and 
not till the very moment fixed beforehand for the 
recurrence of the suspended recollection. 

Thus E. A., in mesmerism, was told to remember, 
at nine the following morning, and not till then, that 
he should come to fetch one of our party to hear a 
beautiful mass that was to be performed in a church 
at Antwerp. The person with whom he lodged, and 
in whose room he slept, informed me subsequently 
that, when the clock struck nine, E. A. was in bed, 
when suddenly he started up, saying, " It is very 
odd ; but I seem to remember that I am to take 

Mrs. to church." He then dressed quickly, 

and came to fulfil his engagement. I asked him in 
what manner the idea had recurred to his mind, if it 
was like the recollection of something heard in a 
dream? He replied, that it did not resemble this in 
the least, but was a very curious and indescribable 
sensation, as if a thought flitted past him from he 
knew not where, and fled again so rapidly that to 
trace its origin was impossible. In sleepwaking he 
could not give me a much better account of the phe- 
nomenon. It was, he said, a something pre-arranged 
in the mechanism of the brain, and which, like the 
spring of a watch, was set in motion at a given mo- 
ment. There was nothing very satisfactory in this 
explanation. As to the phenomenon itself. I and 
the members of my family have witnessed it again 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 187 

and again. We have tried it in minute circum- 
stances, difficult of remembrance, such as (on the 
day succeeding the sleepwaking) to sit in a particular 
chair, or begin with a particular dish at dinner ; to 
cut a potato, when first taken on the plate, into four 
pieces, &c. ; and the result was always satisfactory. 
I have also tried if the circumstances, desired to be 
remembered, could be recalled to the sleepwaker 
before the proper hour; but there was evidently no 
means of doing so. The very first time I told Anna 
M. to remember any thing at a fixed hour, I desired 
her to call to mind, at three the following day, that 
she must ask one of our party to take a walk. After 
her awaking, some one inadvertently said. u Do you 
remember any thing about coming to-morrow to walk 
with us! " She said, alter reflection, "No, indeed, 
I remember nothing about that ; and besides I have 

an engagement lor to-morrow. " Soon after three. 
however, the next day. Anna appeared out of breath, 
and with a face of wonder, exclaiming, " Do tell me; 
was I to come here or not : n She then related that 
she had been out to dinner, and that, in the midst 
of that meal, something seemed to tell her that she 
had promised to come to us; and that, such was the 
force of the impression, she cduld not help leaving 
her party and hastening to ascertain the truth from 
ourselves. 

Having now described in what manner the memory 
is affected in the mesmeric sleep, both as regards its 
spontaneous exercise and its direction through the 
mesmeriser, I proceed to state other remarkable 
peculiarities in the metaphysical condition of mes- 



188 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

meric patients, without adverting to which my view 
of mesmeric sleepwaking, as a condition of man, 
would be incomplete. 

The peculiarities alluded to regard the action of 
the whole mind of the sleepwaker, and not of any 
particular faculty. They may all be ranged under 
two heads : — 

1st, With respect to the patient himself. These 
are peculiarities of consciousness. 

2ndly, Of will, resulting from the patient's relation 
to the mesmeriser. 

The peculiarities of mesmeric consciousness will be 
treated of in the succeeding book, as being explan- 
atory of many circumstances connected with our 
subject. 

The peculiarities of mesmeric will may be expressed 
briefly thus : — That lower degree of will which we call 
volition, and which chiefly regulates the motive func- 
tions, is active, but will (in its freedom and absolute 
sense) is passive, in the sleepwaker, through the influ- 
ence of the mesmeriser. 

The motory adroitness of persons in the mesmeric 
state proves the first part of my assertion. The second 
branch of it susceptible of equal demonstration, as the 
following reflections must render evident. 

Common sleep, it will be granted, is the indication 
of an abjured will — voluntarily abjured, it is true, in 
some cases ; but, in others, suffering a forced abdica- 
tion, as when the sentinel, who knows that, if found 
slumbering on his post, his very life must pay the 
penalty, is vanquished by the slumber he would shun. 
In sleep itself, also, we are no longer our own masters, 
but at the mercy of our dreams. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 189 

11 Reason then retires 
Into her private cell, when Nature rests. 
Oft, in her absence, mimic Fancy wakes 
To imitate her ; but misjoining shapes, 
Wild work produces oft." 

In this state we seem to commit crimes which, 
waking, we regard with abhorrence ; and often the 
impotence of our will is shown by an utter inability 
to throw off the yoke that oppresses us. We would 
wake — but cannot : we strive to cry — but we find 
no voice : we endeavor to move our limbs — but 
they remain idle. 

If common sleep, then be so manifestly the index 
of a suspended will, the mesmeric slumber is not less 
clearly an indication of a will that is over-ruled and 
held in abeyance by a force that is external to itself. 
The proof is simple. The mesmeric slecpwaker can- 
not awake without the mesmeriser's aid. The sub- 
jugation of his will is, therefore, even more complete 
than under the condition of common sleep : for, after 
certain efforts we often succeed in throwing off the 
latter when it becomes disagreeable to us, or the 
casual touch of any one who witnesses our perturbed 
slumber may recall us to ourselves ; but the mesmeric 
patient can neither throw off his bonds, nor be de- 
livered from them by any other than the mesmeriser. 
I have seen such efforts vainly made to arouse a 
sleepwaker otherwise than by the mesmeriser, that 
I have been led to conceive that he might be torn 
limb from limb (as certain animals may be in certain 
states of torpor) without awaking. As with the mes- 
meriser his sleep began, so, it appears, by the mes- 



190 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

meriser alone it can end ; and thus the peculiar slum- 
ber, called mesmeric, is not only the proof of a sus- 
pended will, but of a will subdued, and actually held 
subject, by another. 

But it is not only the duration of the mesmeric 
sleep which proves this predominance of a foreign 
will : the conduct of the sleepwaker, while it lasts, 
is an additional warranty that the rudder of his 
being having changed masters, the whole vessel is also 
under another's direction. At the command of the 
mesmeriser he walks when he would naturally repose, 
and brings his faculties to bear upon any point, at a 
moment when otherwise he seems powerless to exer- 
cise them. 

Summing up the evidence, we find the argument 
run thus : — 

Natural sleep is the indication of a suspended will. 
A sleep that begins and ends by another must be 
allowed to show a will that is held in abeyance by 
external agency. 

A sleep, during which a person is made to act by 
another demonstrates a will that is swayed by that 
other in precise proportion as the obedience is prompt 
and absolute. 

The state of things resulting from this sway on the 
one side and submission on the other is most remark- 
able. We have the phenomenon before us of an ex- 
istence at once dual and single ; for, when the sleep- 
waker's capacities are acting under the immediate 
direction of the mesmeriser, the latter may be consi- 
dered as making up together with him the complement 
of one full being, whereof the mesmeriser supplies the 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 191 

willing and the conscious portion, and the patient the 
intellectual part. The one impels, the other obeys im- 
pulsion : the one designs, the other executes : the 
one sets in motion a machine, (and what a machine ! 
the mind of man with all its complicated marvels !) 
the other is the machine itself, instinct with life, as was 
the fiery car of Kehama, innately active, yet guided 
by the volition of another ! 

This is no poetic fiction. The facts are before us. 
The volition of a sleepwaker is swayed in an arbitrary 
fashion, fully to conceive which, we have only to con- 
sider the difference between the mesmeric subjugation 
of the will, and any other that occurs in our ordinary 
state of existence. I may tell my servant to do such 
or such a thing. When he obeys, it may be said, in 
a certain sense, that his will is subject to mine; yet, 
all the time he does actually retain the functions of 
his own will in perfection. In truth, lie wills as much 
as I do, and on the same principles : good to be sought, 
uneasiness to be shunned, is the efficient cause of 
volition in either case. I command ; his mind, with 
rapidity, strikes a balance with itself, and finds it bet- 
ter to obey. If, however, the balance should incline 
to the other side, my servant has it in his power to 
disobey, and to manifest that his will is in free and 
unimpaired operation. Moreover, he may obey me 
from fear, and not by any means from desire, or iden- 
tity of his will with mine. I sway the outward and 
not the inward man. But, in mesmerism, it is not 
only the manifestation, but the very function of the 
will which is dominated. It cannot, if it would, rise 
to freedom : it is under a more than moral restraint. 






192 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

Its motive force, desire, is evidently changed, since, 
as I have shown, the sleepwaker adopts, pro tempore,^ 
the likings and dislikings of the mesmeriser. Hence, 
when the patient is engaged in an act of obedience, 
there is an identification between the mesmeriser's 
will and his own ; a phenomenon which can never 
obtain in the case of simple obedience. The inner 
springs are touched, and not the mere mechanism 
swayed. 

Such a view of the state of mesmeric sleepwaking 
may seem unpleasing, and incompatible with its be- 
ing a rise in man's condition ; but, let it be remem- 
bered, we do not rob the soul of any one faculty, 
we only change its mode of action, and that mode of 
action has its own undeviating law. In order to sleep, 
we must abdicate our will ; yet, in order to enjoy in- 
tellectual activity, it is plain that we must substitute 
a presiding will ; for it is the absence of this which 
makes slumber a state of disorganized and inconse- 
quent thoughts. Thus the terms are absolute. If 
we desire to be freed from the thrall of the senses, 
yet to retain the mental faculties, we must abjure our 
own will, yet find an intellectual substitute. 

Again, we may have observed that the superior 
activity of any one power of the mind greatly depends 
on the non-action of certain others. With some in- 
dividuals fancy revels at the expense of reason ; with 
others, the cultivation of the exact sciences deadens 
the imagination ; and this inequality of power results 
naturally from the imperfection of our nature. AVere 
we strong throughout, we should be as gods. But, 
in mesmeric sleepwaking, the question is not whether 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 193 

we shall cancel one of our faculties in order to increase 
another ; but whether we shall, in a degree, change 
their directive force, in order to obtain a general and 
immense expansion of them all. Large advantages 
demand large sacrifices ; and the price to be paid for 
the increase of mental powers and of sensitive capa- 
bilities, which attends upon the state of mesmeric 
sleepwaking, is a certain forfeiture of the will. Does 
this seem a hard condition ? How many who have 
suffered from self-direction would be glad to place 
the government of their being in other hands ! How 
many a one, who " has felt the weight of too much 
liberty/' would gladly cease to be 

11 Lord of himself — that heritage of woe — 
That doubtful empire, which the bam an breast 
But holds to rob the heart within of rest." 

This, at least, is my view of the limitations of the 
will in mesmeric sleepwaking ; it may be accepted 
or rejected, but the facts, on which it is founded, re- 
main the same. 

The power which the mesmeriser has over his pa- 
tient is, indeed, as great as it is undeniable, and in- 
volves, in my apprehension, an immense responsibility 
on the part of the former. Should he direct the 
patient's attention to frivolous or evil things, he might 
do harm, for which he would be justly answerable. 
But, fortunately, as I have before remarked, there is, 
in mesmeric sleepwaking, a natural elevation of the 
mind above what is base and sensual : and the pow- 
ers that appertain to reason, though the subjects on 
which they shall exercise themselves may be much 
17 



194 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

at the mesmeriser's disposal, are neither to be clouded 
nor controlled. Nor is this to be wondered at. The 
mesmeriser can hardly be expected to command in 
another that which he can by no means dispose of in 
himself. In him, in every one of us, Reason, though 
too often we would quench her voice, will speak as 
loudly as conscience, which, indeed, is but a more 
rapid reason ; and he who takes the evil path be- 
holds, and reluctantly approves, the better way. 
This shows a godlike capability in reason, apart from 
volition : it seems less to belong to ourselves than to 
be heaven speaking in us ; and, in proportion as we 
obey its dictates, we are exalted in the scale of crea- 
tion. Its peculiar luminousness, then, under the 
mesmeric conditions, is at once a safeguard to the 
sleepwaker, and a clear record of the most valuable 
birthright of man. Many persons, as I am aware, 
have disliked the idea of being mesmerised, from the 
fear of making wrong revelations, when deprived of 
their usual consciousness. But this is a vain appre- 
hension. It is true that mesmeric patients act from 
impulse, but then their impulses are good. They 
will say severe but wholesome truths to persons' faces ; 
but their instinctive sense of right forbids them to 

speak ill of any one behind his back. Anna M j 

with all her knowledge of circumstances relating to 
others, never seasoned her talk with scandalous dis- 
closures, never uttered a word that could injure a 
human being ; and once, being pressed to relate 
something which might have compromised another 
person, not only kept silence on that head, but re- 
proved the curiosity of the querist. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 195 

Before proceeding to consider the mind under 
mesmerism, in its relation to external things, it 
seems necessary to notice a class of its intelligences 
which may be called instinctive, and which, as seem- 
ing to occupy the middle ground between mind and 
matter, may properly claim our consideration in this 
part of our inquiry. Instinct being the very reverse 
of artificial acquirement, a high degree of the one is, 
under ordinary circumstances, incompatible with the 
existence of the other. In proportion as we are edu- 
cated we recede from our intuitive perceptions. But, 
as in many instances, BO in this, mesmeric sleep- 
waking reconciles two seeming opposites, which co- 
exist not in any other known state of being. Re- 
taining the advantages acquired by art. the mesmeric 
patient i- restored to those which, in a more primi- 
tive condition, we might inherit from nature. 

The instinctive knowledge of sleep wakere appears 
to be chiefly 

1. ( )f remedies. 

2. Of all that relates to the mesmeric state. 

3. Of the elapse of time. 

First, The instinct of remedies, evinced by sleep- 
wakers, has been frequently remarked and illus- 
trated. As I have never studied mesmerism in a 
medical point of view, I have naturally had but few 
opportunities of verifying allegations to this effect. 
The following instances, however, of the mesmeric 
powers of prescribing, fell under my notice, and will, 
perhaps, be the less suspected by the incredulous, as 
having presented themselves unsought to one who is 
not of the medical profession. 



196 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

The first time that I succeeded in mesmerising 

E. A- , a gentleman present told me to ask him, 

while in sleepwaking, what remedy a lady of their 
mutual acquaintance should apply for the cure of a 
chronic sore throat with which she had been for 
some time afflicted. The question being put to the 
sleepwaker, he immediately replied, " Mademoiselle 
De should, on going to bed every night, enve- 
lope her throat in a linseed poultice, which should 
be kept moist the whole night through." He then 
added some very particular directions about the 
making and applying of the poultice, &c. When 
the reader reflects that this piece of medical advice 
came from a lively boy of fifteen, who was never ill 
in his life, and who hated every thing appertaining 
to disorders and their remedies, he will, I think, 
experience somewhat of the surprise with which I 
listened to the young sleepwaker. Conceiving that 
he might not be original in the remedy which he 
had proposed, I asked the gentleman, who had told 

me to consult him, whether Mademoiselle De 

had been recommended any thing of the kind. He 
assured me that such had not been the case, but 
that she had tried many other things with no effect. 
When E. A. awoke and we told him of his medical 
exploits, he was the first to laugh at his own oddity : 
however, it was an oddity at which Mademoiselle 
De had reason to rejoice ; for the remedy pre- 
scribed for her in sleepwaking removed the painful 
ailment from which she had so long suffered. 

The above circumstance gave me more confidence 
in the remedial instincts of sleepwakers, and induced 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 197 

me, on one occasion, to ask a young lady whom I 
had mesmerised what measures she should recom- 
mend me to take for subduing a pain in my side, to 
which I had long been subject, in consequence of a 
blow received there in a fall from horseback. The 
jdeepwaker, without hesitation, told me that 1 ought 
to wear a perpetual blister on the part for some time, 
and gave the minutest directions about the size, ap- 
plication, &c. of the irritant. Yet I did not have 
recourse to it until I had consulted a medical man, 
who assured me that I could do no better than follow 

{£jgg 's advice, and that, had the lady in question 

taken out a diploma, she could not have counseled 
me more wisely. Yet the fair doctn BS was a shy and 
delicate girl of Sixteen, who. when awake, was shock- 
ed at herself for having touched on medical matters 
in her sleepwaking. The application which she 

recommended me was of great senrice 3 and subdued 
the chronic pain from which I had suffered inces- 
santly for many months. 

Under the head of Case X., mentioned in the 
preceding book, I have related that I mesmerised a 
gentleman who was not in good health ; and I pro- 
mised to detail some additional particulars respecting 
him. I now redeem that pledge. Mr. W. had long 
been in what is called an ailing state. Without be- 
ing precisely ill, he felt generally incommoded. He 
had no idea whatever of the cause of his indisposi- 
tion, and he had consulted no one respecting it ; 
having, as he said, a particular dislike to medicines 
of all kinds. While he was sleeping mesmerically, 
it occurred to me to ask him whether he was more 
17* 



198 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

cognisant of his malady than when in his natural 
state. He replied directly, " Yes. I see now ex- 
actly what is the matter with me ; and I am happy 
to say that there is no organic complaint. My dis- 
order is a weakness of the lower intestine, which 
proceeds from sedentary habits, and which can only 
be cured by alterative measures." He then pre- 
scribed for himself a course of the waters and baths 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, and a certain regimen (which I 
carefully noted ;) and finally pronounced with deci- 
sion that, in strictly following these rules, he should 
be radically cured before the end of the year. When 
the patient was awake, I told him all that he had 
been saying in sleepwaking, at which he was much 
astonished ; and assured me that the idea of taking 
baths, or drinking the waters of Aix had never en- 
tered his head while in his natural state. I urged 
him to pursue the curative plan which he had traced 
out for himself. This he promised to do ; and last 
autumn (I had mesmerised him in the spring of the 
same year) I received a letter from him, announcing 
that, by following my advice, or rather his own, he 
was nearly restored to health. 

Secondly, The instinct of sleepwakers, relating to 
all that concerns the mesmeric state, is one of the 
first that seems to awaken within them. As soon as 
they have passed into sleepwaking, they will indicate 
the best means whereby the mesmeriser may deepen 
their slumber, soothe them, or remove any slight un- 
easiness they may feel. 

Anna M , on one occasion, while I was mes- 
merising some water for her, took the glass from my 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 199 

hand, and said, " You do not employ the best me- 
thod. I will show you what you must do." She 
then placed one hand on the top, the other at the 
bottom, of the tumbler, held it so for a short time, 
and then again applied her hands to the sides of the 
glass, in a very methodical manner. Another time, 
being asked, in sleepwaking, if she could say how a 
person present ought to be mesmerised for a pain 
from which she was suffering, she proceeded to show 
how the operation should be performed, and executed 
the mesmeric passes as if she had studied them all her 
life. Curious to see how far this kind of instinct 
would extend. I, one evening, requested her, while in 
the mesmeric state herself, to mesmerise a younger 
lister \n1io was present She did not hesitate to do 
this : and. placing her sister in a proper position, pro- 
eeeded to mesmerise her in the most skilful manner. 
The most singular thing is that she used gestures 
which were perfectly new to me, but which I at once 
perceived to be very effective. Frequently she 
breathed upon her own hand, and then laid it on her 
sister's forehead. In a short time the little girl began 
to be affected with sleep, when my sleepwaker told 
me that I must aid her to complete the work. She 
took one of my hands, and instructed me to mes- 
merise with the other, while she herself continued to 
mesmerise with one hand. The effect of this double 
operation upon our young patient seemed to be great. 
Her head was alternately attracted towards each of 
her mesmerisers, and she was soon in a profound 
sleep. Nothing could be more curious than to see 
the two sisters sitting opposite each other, both with 



200 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

their eyes shut, and yet, by the expression of their 
countenances, appearing to look at each other. I 
now went away to another part of the room, when 

Anna M got up, and walked to just half-way 

between her sister and myself, but she seemed 
arrested there by the attraction of contending forces 
and so she remained, turning from me to her sister, 
and vice versa, as if she knew not to which she should 
go, till I put an end to this curious scene by return- 
ing to my sleepwaker, and begging her to awake her 
sister. This, however, she declared that she could 
not do ; but added, " The moment that you awake 
me, my sister will wake also." The event justified 

her assertion. Anna M seemed to possess, when 

in the mesmeric state, a curious power of divining 
which persons of the company, who might happen to 
be present during her mesmerisation, would be capable 
of mesmeric sleepwaking. In such particulars as these 
I have never known her err. It has also happened 
that, while she was mesmerised, some other person 
in the room has mesmerised another patient. At 
these times she would indicate, with exact precision, 
the degrees of sleep through which the other patient 
was passing ; and often, when every one else has sup- 
posed the slumber to be complete, she has declared it 
was not so, and was always right in her judgments. 
I should observe that in her natural state, she had 
none of this knowledge ; and once, when I asked her 
to mesmerise some one, declared her inability to do 
any thing of the kind. 

Thirdly, The appreciation of time displayed by per- 
sons in the mesmeric state is remarkable. I have never 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 201 

known perfect sleepwakers overpass the exact moment 
at which they may have been told to remind the mes— > 
meriser to awaken them ; and yet, directly after re- 
turning to their natural state, they will, if questioned, 
make the vridesl guesses of the time. I extract the 
following from our mesmeric register; — Anna, on 
being asked the hour, says it is ten o'clock : the 
cathedral bell strike- fire seconds after. She did 
not know the time when the nie^ineriser began his 
operations, yet can now tell correctly that she has 
been sleeping an hour and five minutes. — On being 
asked when she would awake, she named half-past 
ten : and. before we had heard the first chime of the 
cathedral, she interrupted the conversation suddenly, 
saying with a start, "Ah! you ought to awake me 
DdW." I used to remark that, when this sleepwaker 
Was asked the time. Bhe did not reply so correctly as 

above; but when, a- vras often the cs spon- 

taneously called out the hour, she never erred. The 
least degree of effort on her part seemed to spoil the 

instinct. 

I now proceed to consider the mind under mesmer- 
ism, in relation to its susceptibility to external things. 

When it is remembered that the bodily senses, in 
the mesmeric sleep, have been shown to be as dead, 
an inquiry into the sensations of sleepwakers may 
seem inconsistent in the highest degree ; but we may 
perhaps discover, on reflection, that the apparent con- 
tradiction is only to be laid to the charge of our own 
erroneous notions. Did persons clearly perceive 
the simple fact, that sensation is not seated in the 
senses, but in the mind, they would be less astonished 



202 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

at hearing of a means of sensation apart from the 
usual action of the senses; but there are few — very 
few — who discern this important truth (which, indeed, 
lies at the base of all metaphysical knowledge) with 
such perfection as to be wholly free from a certain 
confusion of thought respecting it. Thus, the pre- 
paratives of sensation have been studied as sensation 
itself; but, as Sir James Mackintosh has admirably 
observed, " All the changes in our organs, which can 
be likened to other material phenomena, are nothing 
more than antecedents and prerequisites of perception^ 
bearing not the faintest likeness to it : as much out- 
ward, in relation to the thinking principle, as if they 
occurred in any other part of matter ; and of which 
the entire comprehension, if it were attained, would 
not bring us a step nearer to the nature of thought," 
Nothing can be truer than this; but our minds 
and bodies are, in this life, so strongly identified, that 
it is a hard matter for us sufficiently to discern the 
huge gulf between mind and matter, and to perceive 
that we may throw in matter for ever, without rilling 
up the abyss of separation. God alone has solved 
that dilemma; and, by attaching the external sei 
to the soul, has built a bridge for us, arching the 
chasm across. He has thus brought us into conscious 
connection with matter and certain of its qualities, 
primary and secondary ; but, if we could be made 
aware of the same things in another way. is it not 
plain that the great end would be equally answered? 
If the soul be brought into relationship with matter 
and its properties, the means are but of small im- 
portance, either as regards their nature or their mini- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIXG. "203 

ber. So that the visible universe, which is but an 
expression of Goers ideas, be in some measure read 
and comprehended by as; so that there be a lan- 
guage established between man and his Creator ; the 

particular types and configurations of that language 
are of no more consequence than the forms of our 
written or printed alphabets. This is not the place 
to dwell further upon these reflections (to be resumed 
hereafter) ; but the mere sinatterer in metaphysics, 
who has learned that odor, color, savor, sound, are 
absolutely only known to us as sensations, and can 
be said to have no proper existence but in ourselves, 
should by no means be alarmed at my viewing sen- 
Bation in it< results, rather than in hs pre-recjnisites J 

while the truest metaphysician will be the best pie- 
pared to examine, without prejudice, a mode of per- 
ception differing from the normal. There are, how- 
ever, weaker numb, for whose sake 1 must here 
expose a fallacy which ha- prevented many well- 
meaning persons from even venturing to think upon 
mesmerism. It has been argued, with a show of 
plausibility, "God gave us our senses for such and 
such uses: is it not. then, an impiety to say that we 
can do as well without them? Is not their beautiful 
contrivance, their unrivaled mechanism, thus thrown 
into contempt J Shall God be -aid to create need- 
lessly, and to endow without wisdom?" Reasoning 
like this is an a priori condemnation of mesmerism; 
but is it just? A child iniirht refute it. It proceeds 
all along upon false assumptions. Does the advocate 
of mesmerism assert that we can do as well without 



204 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

our senses in the normal state ? Certainly not. Does 
he any more deny that our present senses are exquis- 
itely adapted to that state in which, being our natu- 
ral, the greater proportion of our time must necessa- 
rily be passed ? Far from it : he acknowledges this 
and far more. He reaches a cause of gratitude to 
God which is beyond the scope of the narrow-mind- 
ed bigot. For what nobler purpose, he may ask, 
could a change in our mode of perception be per- 
mitted, than to show the necessitarian that the ar- 
rangements of the Almighty depend upon the almighty 
will alone ; that what is might easily have been other- 
wise ; and that infinite w r isdom can vary its resources 
infinitely ? Believing, thus, that to witness a change 
in our mode of perception may be allowed for the 
instruction of the skeptic, he may also conjecture 
that the privilege of beholding an improvement therein 
may be accorded for the encouragement of the be- 
liever. He can well imagine that the beneficent Be- 
ing, who ever in the present gives indications of the 
future, has placed within us a palpable proof of our 
high immortal destiny ; and will permit the soul, 
even in this restricted sphere, to view the temporary 
expansion of its yet folded wings. 

This may be deemed too vague ; but to the colder 
reasoner I should suggest, that, in truth, mesmerism 
does in no w T ay contradict our former experience : it 
merely enlarges it. We do not learn that our senses 
are not the organs of sensation to us in our usual 
state; but we learn an additional truth — namely, 
that, in another and anomalous condition, wo find 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 205 

some unwonted medium of sensation. Nor by this 
are nature's established principles necessarily violated 
or even infringed. They who believe that the per- 
ceptive peculiarities of mesmerism proceed (as Cole- 
ridge seems to hint they may do) from " a metastasis 
of specific functions of the nervous energy/ 5 may still 
agree to that definition of sensation, which a great 
philosopher has pronounced the only one thai can be 
given, namely, ** A state or affection of the mind, 
arising immediately and solely from a state or affection 
of the body." ' 

It is important, also, to remark, that the informa- 
tion respecting external objects, obtained through the 
new action of the senses in mesmerism, though some- 
times exceeding* does qoI at all vary from, that 
which we receive by the usual channels. Thus we 
have a double witness to the truth and reality of the 
things around us: we feel, with Descartes, that God 
is not the author of a lie : and. far from being led to 
doubt or to undervalue our present organs of sensa- 
tion, are more than ever disposed to confide in them : 
skepticism itself allowing the potency of evidence 
which springs from two separate yet concurrent 
soun 

But, whether the preceding remarks be admitted 
to be just or not, the truth must be stated. Mes- 
meric sleepwaking has its own mode of perception ; 
the peculiarities of which I now proceed, to the best 
of my ability, to nt. 

1 Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind, 
18 



206 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIN6. 

In the first place, the mode of sensation in mes- 
merised persons is (like their mode of motion) of a 
twofold nature : the one resulting, as it seems, from 
a species of nervous communication with the mes- 
meriser, the other, from the peculiar state of their 
own nervous system under an exciting and develop- 
ing stimulus. To discriminate between these two 
modes of sensation is important, but by no means 
easy. The intimate union between the patient and 
his mesmeriser, subsisting throughout the mesmeric 
trance, complicates the phenomena, and renders them 
hard to disentangle. Moreover there are deceptive 
appearances, which are calculated to perplex an in- 
quiry as to the exact medium through which sensa- 
tion is conveyed to the mesmerised person. For 
instance : — we will suppose the mesmeriser to place 
something in the patient's hand ; — after a time the 
latter can tell the form of the object, apparently by 
the usual sense of touch. Now this is in diametrical 
opposition to the fact, that pins thrust into the pa- 
tient's hand excite no sensation there. How shall 
we reconcile the seeming contradiction ? One mo- 
ment we see the nerves of sensation useless and 
dead ; the next, we see them apparently acting as 
usual. All this is very paradoxical ; but, if we cling 
to what we have proved, and take some evident 
principle, thence educed, to guide us through the 
darkling maze, we shall perhaps find that the oppo- 
site poles belong to one common orb of reasoning, 
and are, indeed, the axis upon which the whole re- 
volves. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 207 

First We have established, by a series of experi- 
ments, that the nerves of sensation, in mesmeric pa- 
tients, are of themselves quite estranged from their 
usual modes of action. 

Secondly. We may deduce from this, that, if the 
patient experiences sensation, it must be, whatever 
appearances might lead one to suppose, by some 
other than the usual mode of nervous action. 

Thirdly. Facts come in aid of this deduction. 

Let us observe a mesmerised person holding any 
thing iA his hand, after a command to examine it. 
How unconscious, how unmeaning, is the action with 
which he turns the object about ! How palpable is 
his hesitation, as if the mere attempt to use the ac- 
customed channel of sensation were embarrassing ! 
Can we indeed affirm, should he correctly name that 
which he holds, that it is by touch he has formed his 
judgment ? Having once proved that his sense of 
touch is null, surely it is wiser to conjecture that his 
tactual perceptions now come to him in some other 
way. Agreeably to this conjecture, I may remark, 
that my sleepwakers have often failed to recognise by 
touch objects which they have at other times seemed 
to distinguish rather by a species of vision. Once 

Anna M- was for a time made to believe that a 

piece of wood, that had been given her to hold, was 
a piece of snow. Another time, an orange was 
placed in her hand. She told what it was ; but 
observed, " You may think I know this by feeling : it 
is not so. In the mesmeric state I have only one 



208 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

method of knowing things ; and whether I see them, 
smell them, or feel them, it is all the same." * 

I explain, then, the circumstance, that mesmeric 
patients sometimes handle objects, by mere habits of 
motion ; — the circumstance that they occasionally 
recognise objects so handled, by the new perceptions 
which, as I shall hereafter show, are opened to them 
in their new condition. 

Should this be granted, our path to a comprehen- 
sion of the mystery will be at least smoothed and 
prepared ; and there will be no obstacle to our sub- 
scribing to a proposition, which goes far to explain 
and reconcile the antithetical phenomena of mes- 
merism namely, that the conditions of ordinary sen- 
sation are only restored to mesmeric sleepwakers 
through their mesmeriser. 

In demonstration of this, I need not re-urge the 
deadness of sleepwakers to ordinary sensation. I 
have only to bring forward some singular proofs, 
hitherto held back, that impressions of the external 
world not only reach the mesmeric patient, when 
transmitted through the mesmeriser, but, in such 
cases, are actually transmitted through the usual 
nervous channels. 



1 This is curiously consonant with the account which the sleep- 
waker of Prevorst gave of her own sensations : 

"She was eating- some soup while her eyes were shut, and she 
said, * I can find whatever I will upon my plate with the spoon — 
I know well where it is ; but I cannot tell whether I see or feel it. 
And so with regard to all other objects : I know not whether I see 
or feel them.' " — Die Sclicrin von. Prevorst, vol. i. p. 15'2. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 209 

Did any one strike or hurt me in any part of the 

body, when Anna M was in sleepwaking, she 

immediately carried her hand to a corresponding part 
of her own person. Thus, she would rub her own 
shoulder when mine was smarting with a blow, mani- 
festing that the actual nerves of that part were, j)ro 
tempore, restored to their functions. Once an incre- 
dulous person came near tine unawares, and trod 
upon my loot, which was quite hidden under a chair. 
The sleepwaker instantly darted down her hand, and 
rubbed her own foot, with an expression of pain, 
in. if my hair was pulled from behind, Anna 
directly raised her hand to the back of her head. A 
pin thrust into my hand elicited an equal demon- 
stration of sympathy. 

I have already remarked that, when the mesmeriser 
eats, or drinks, or smells anything, his patients go 
through th motions, as if the impact of the 

Substances were bn their own nerves. But this, it 
ma\ i. might be referred to the simultaneity of 

motion which I have shown to exist occasionally be- 
tween the sleepwaker and the mesmeriser. I have, 
however, a very strong proof that the former has 
really an impression on the nerves of taste, corres- 
ponding with that of the latter. Three of my sleep- 
Wakers (on whom alone 1 tried the experiment) could 
in no way distinguish substances when placed in their 
own mouths, nor discriminate between a piece of ap- 
ple and a piece of cheese ; but, the moment that I 
was eating, they, seeming to eat also, could tell me 
what I had in my mouth. Once I tried this, before 
many witnesses, on the sister of Theodore, with some 
18* 



210 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

pieces of fig which I had carefully concealed, and the 
experiment answered perfectly. 

Again, Anna M heard my watch ticking 

when I held it to my own ear, though not when she 
held it to her own. In the former case, she assured 
me that she heard the sound exactly as if the watch 
were close to her own ear. 

We are then, I think, justified in concluding that, 
in certain cases, the actual capacity of the nerves to 
convey impressions is restored to mesmeric sleep- 
wakers through the mesmeriser, but in no case spon- 
taneously. Indeed, the very thraldom of their will 
seems to forbid the latter supposition : and it is not 
extravagant to suppose that the mesmeriser, who, 
by facts, has been shown capable of paralyzing the 
nerves of his patient, should also have the power of 
restoring to them the conditions of sensation. 

It may not be amiss, however, to answer here an 
objection that has been raised by some who have not 
sufficiently considered the nature of mesmeric sleep- 
waking. It has been asked, why, if there be such a 
sympathy between the patient and the mesmeriser, 
the latter does not also share the sleepwakers sensa- 
tions ? For one plain reason ; the one is active, the 
other passive ; there is union, but not reciprocity. 
The mesmeriser is not in mesmeric sleepwaking, tire 
patient is ; and only he who is in the mesmeric state 
can appreciate sensations in the mesmeric manner. 
The mesmeriser must be considered as the bestower 
of a stimulus which exalts another to a particular 
pitch of feeling ; and the patient as the recipient of 
that stimulus, which if he were to re-bestow, he must 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 211 

fall back into his old habitual state. Thus there can 
be no re-action on the mesmeriser. A proper view 
of the relationship between the parties will at once 
clear up the difficulty. 

I proceed to show what are the principal pheno- 
mena of sensation which more properly belong to the 
patient himself. 

First. In some cases, the class of perceptions, de- 
pendent upon a particular sense, are restricted in 
number only to be increased in degree. 

Anna M , in sleepwaking, ordinarily heard 

nothing but my voice and the voices of those who 
Were in a certain contact with me; but her appro* 
ciation of such musical sounds as she was made to 
hear w;is much greater than in the waking state. I 

Was in tl to her when mesmerised; 

and. though at ether times she cared little for mu- 
sic she then evinced a pleasure which indicated an 

to musical impressions. She 
ued with the deepest attention; as the measure 
changed, her countenance became animated or se- 
rious ; and she marked such parts of the perform- 
as were most pleasing to her by a motion of 
her head or by raising her finger. It was remarkable 
that my voice, when I was singing, acted, in relation 
to the sleepwaker, as a conductor to other sounds. 
Then, and then only, she appeared to be sensible of 
the most trifling noises in the apartment, and was 
impatient of them to the highest degree ; holding up 
her forefinger, as if to enjoin silence, and uttering 
prolonged hushes. On one occasion, a person joined 
me in singing, when Anna testified the strongest 



212 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

disgust, making wry faces, and gestures of repug- 
nance. 

We then tried the experiment of making the 
person sing alone ; but the sleepwaker no longer 
showed dislike, and, on being questioned, said that 
she heard nothing. Occasionally this patient mani- 
fested a slight agitation or oppression in the mes- 
meric state ; but these uneasy feelings invariably 
passed away under the influence of music. When 
brought into " rapport " with other performers than 
her mesmeriser, she still exhibited an unusual degree 
of musical sensibility; marking the best passages of 
a composition with so much taste, and beating time 
so accurately, as once to make a musician suppose 
that she was intimately acquainted with his art. 
She always, however, heard a voice more distinctly 
than the piano. The conduction of the sound was 
thus accomplished: — I laid one hand upon the 
performer's shoulder, while she herself touched him 
with one hand and myself witli the other. We 
have often tried what effect music would have upon 
the patient when awake ; and it was evident that 
her musical feeling had passed away with her mes- 
meric state. 

Perhaps I ought here to record a phenomenon, re- 
lative to the sense of hearing, which spontaneously 

presented itself. Anna M , in sleepwaking. had 

my watch in her hand, in order to tell the hour : but. 
disregarding this, she seemed to be amusing herself 
with the watch, alternately carrying it from her ear 
to the pit of her stomach, when suddenly she ex- 
claimed, " This is wonderful ! I cannot hear the 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 213 

watch tick when at my ear, but, placed below my 
chest, I hear it." Other experiments showed that 
she could also hear the ticking of the watch when it 
was held close tp her forehead, or to my own car. I 
should observe that, in her waking slate, she knew 
nothing whatever of the alleged transposition of the 
senses in mesmerism, and that 1 had not much taste 
for developments in the "cerebrum abdominale." 

\.. who, in sleepwaking, could hear nothing 
when persons shouted close to his oar. did yet evi- 
dently retain, in certain cases, a very delicate per- 
ception of sound. This was proved by his being 
able still to play the flute with his ordinary precision 
and even more than his usual brilliancy. Often, too, 
he composed original airs during his sleepwaking 
with a great fertility of invention ; and, though it 
\ tor him, accomplished musician as he 
more musical talent in his new state 
than be evinced commonly, y t, on some occasions! 
lie demonstrated that his discrimination of sounds 
had attained, under mesmerism, a higher develop- 
ment. 

First. Tie played on the piano, correctly, an air, 
which, awake, he played but imperfectly, not having 
the same power of execution on the piano as on the 
flute — his peculiar instrument. 

Secondly. Playing an air on the piano, in sleep- 
waking, he adapted to a particular note a new chord, 
which I at once perceived to be a great improvement 
on the original. Not willing, however, to trust to 
my own judgment, I consulted a musician on the 
point ; when he declared the chord played in sleep- 



214 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 



Waking to be the best, and indeed the very one which 
was required by the laws of harmony. Curious to 
observe whether E. A. would discover this of himself, 
in the waking state, I never mentioned the subject 
before him ; and I found that, unless sleeping mes- 
merically, he continued to play the air with the erro- 
neous chord. 

The second peculiarity of perception in the state 
of mesmeric sleepwaking, which it occurs to me to 
point out, is — 

A sensibility to influences which in no way affect 
persons in the waking condition. 

A prism, which I held in my hand, and turned 
with the point towards the patient, produced, in 
two several cases, startings and slight shudderin 

Again, I concealed a magnet in my hand, with 
such precautions that the patient could have no idea 
of any thing unusual, unless through some develop- 
ment of feeling. The patient (Anna M ) started 

each time that I extended towards her the band 
which held the magnet, and exhibited convulsive 
movements in the hands. When questioned respect- 
ing her sensations, she replied, " I feel as if I were 
beginning to be mesmerised, but not pleasantly — I 
feel all cold." 

Desirous to try if the different poles of the magnet 
would produce different effects, I held the south pole 
to the forehead of the sleepwaker. when she made 
sundry oscillations with her head, which at length 
slowly advanced towards the magnet. On present- 
ing the north pole, her head began to retreat gently, 
and with an unsteady motion, like that of the mag- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 215 

netic needle. The same experiments, tried upon two 
other sleepwakers, gave the same results. Sometimes, 
when I have presented the north pole of the magnet, 
the patient's head has retreated by jerks, as if driven 
backward by successive -hocks. The south pole, on 
the contrary, has always seemed to exercise a very 
powerful attractive force over sleepwakers ; yet, as 
far as L can judge, they dislike to be submitted to 
mineral magnetism, which, as they affirm, produces 
in them disagreeable sensations. 1 have known one 
individual, who was sensible to the action of a mag- 
net lying on a table at some distance and covered 
by a piece of paper, and who begged it might be re- 
moved. I once asked a slerpwaker whether she could 
perceive any analogy between animal and mineral 

magnetism, when she replied, "There is an analogy 

— but the latter ifl of a coarser nature.' 3 Minerals, 

in general, seem also disagreeable to Bleepwakers. 
Once. I gave a pair of scissors to Anna M (then 

in the mesmeric state), in order to eut some thread 

belonging to a work she was engaged in. Having 

cut the thread, sin.' shuddered and threw the scissors 
from her. When asked if she did this because of 
the old proverb, that •• scissors cut love/' she smiled, 
and said. " [n my present State, I have no such su- 
perstitions ; but I threw the scissors away, because, 
when mesmerised. I cannot bear to touch metal." ' 



1 Caspar Ilauser, whose nervous sensibility had been exalted by 
an unnatural seclusion from the stimulus of external things, was 
extremely alive to metallic influences, and could tell, through ob- 
stacles, where a needle was placed ; pointing to the exact spot, and 
saying, li It draws me here.'' 



216 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

The effects which precious stones produce upon 
sleepwakers are also curious. In three cases, where 
I had the opportunity of making experiments of the 
kind, I found a certain correspondence of sensation, 
which inclines me to believe that a more extended 
observation might lead to some certain and interest- 
ing results. 

The diamond, when presented to the forehead of 
a sleepwaker, seemed invariably to excite agreeable 
feelings : the opal had a soothing effect ; the emerald 
gave a slightly unpleasing sensation ; and the sapphire 
one that was positively painful. What is singular is 
that, if the last-named stone was applied to Anna 

M 's forehead, she complained of its roughness, 

though it was polished perfectly smooth, — while, on 
the contrary, on contact with the diamond, which 
was cut in facets, she experienced a sensation of 
smoothness. One sleepwaker loved the diamond so 
much as to lean forward after it, when I held it in 
my hand, and to rub her forehead against it. In 
general, however, I did not touch the patients with 
the gems, but held them, concealed in my hand, at a 
few inches distance from the forehead ; and I changed 
their order sufficiently often to prove that the sleep- 
waker's judgment of them was not accidental. 1 

1 The following is extracted from our mesmeric diary : — ;; Being 
shown several precious stones, Anna put her forehead towards them. 
and started, more or less, at each. Some, she says, produce agree- 
able, others disagreeable feelings. Being asked if it is because they 
are cold, she answers, "Oh no ! far from it. Some are very hot, 
and others scratch me as if they would tear the skin off my face." 
After several experiments, she declared that the opal gave a so ft 
feeling, but was neither particularly agreeable nor disagreeable. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 217 

Another proof of the increased sensibility of sleep- 
wakers is the ease and certainty with which they dis- 
tinguish water that has been breathed on or touched 
by the mesmeriser. I have somtimes thus mesmerised, 
as it is called, a gfaQM of water, half an hour before it 
was presented to the sleepwaker, amongst three 
others, ettctfy similar and tilled exactly to the same 
point. The result of one of these trials shall be 
given, as taken down at the time by an eye-witness 
of the experiment : — Four glasses of water being 

presented on a tray to Anna M , one of which 

was mesmerised, she passes her hands over them all, 
feeling the rims, and fixes on the mesmerised one. 
The order of the glasses being changed behind the 
mesm<Ti«Ts back, who stood so as to screen the 
tray from the patient, she feels them all again, and 
lives on the mesmerised water a second time. 
Changed again, again she finds it, and drinks half 
of the contents of the tumbler, saying it will do her 
good." 

The sleepwaker seemed to have two methods of 
distinguishing the mesmerised water — the one, ns 
above described, by running her fingers over the 
glasses ; the other by carrying each glass to her lips, 
and slightly tasting the water it contained. In the 
latter case, she invariably marked both her knowledge 

The sapphire was hot. and very disagreeable. The Brazilian diamond 
had a pleasing effect, as if it were the hand of her mesmeriser. The 
emerald she made faces and pouted at, saying it was not agreeable. 
When the stones were held to her forehead, concealed in the 
mesrneriser's hand, she knew them all again, and gave the same ac- 
count of her feelings." 
19 



218 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

and her preference of the mesmerised water, by taking 
a deep draught immediately on tasting it. When 
asked how it seemed to taste to her, she replied, " So 
agreeably that it is impossible to describe it." 

On one occasion, a person who suspected that the 
mesmerised water was discovered through some slight 
difference in the taste or look, from its having been 
handled, tried to deceive the sleepwaker, by present- 
ing, amongst the other glasses, one that contained the 
weakest possible solution of toast and water ; but the 
instincts of the sleepwaker were in no way dis- 
turbed. She chose the mesmerised water unerringly 
as before. 

Whatever I had touched she distinguished with 
equal certainty, and would only accept such articles 
of diet as were transmitted through my hand. Once, 
when I was giving her some cherries, a friend, who 
was incredulous, tried in every way to place the 
fruit in her hand in such a manner as to make her 
suppose that I was continuing to present it, but she 
threw away instantly every cherry that my friend 
had touched, making a face expressive of dislike. Is 
this, by the way, more extraordinary than the acute- 
ness of sense by which the dog recognises its master's 
property, or do we only deem it so because less 
within the scope of our daily experience ? 

But it was not only as regarded objects that be- 
longed to myself that Anna M exhibited extraor- 
dinary powers of discrimination. More than once, the 
pocket-handkerchiefs of five persons have been tossed 
to her indiscriminately, (sometimes they have been 
all cambric and all nearly alike,) yet, after they had 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 2 1 9 

been jumbled together on her lap. she has quickly 
and correctly restored each to its several owner. 
Occasionally, this finer perception, manifested by 

Anna M in sleepwaking, was. like certain other 

of the mesmeric faculties, continued forward, for a 
brief moment, into the natural state. I and another 
person have presented the sleepwaker with two flow- 
en^ or two strips of paper, as nearly alike as possible, 
discriminating; them by sonic little mark which could 
only be known to ourselves; — we have seen her 
hold these carelessly in her hands, and frequently 
change their position ; yet can we testify that, if bid 
to remember, and asked, immediately on awaking, 

who gave her the articles in question, she could uive 
them back t<> their respective <lon<>r< without hesita- 
tion, though without knowing how or by what im- 
pulse, 

K. A. manifested similar faculties. On being asked 
how he distinguished the mesmerised water, he said, 

u J'y vois une esp< ce de lumii re."' 

All this demonstrates the truth of Laplace's asser- 
tion, that, of all the instruments by which the finer 
emanations of the natural world can be detected, 
the most delicate are the nerves ; especially when 
their sensibility has been developed through particu- 
lar causes 1 /* and I am thence led to suggest that, in- 
stead of quarreling about the exalted sensation of 
sleepwakers. we should endeavor to call it to ac- 
count. Even should we never succeed in fathoming 
its principle, there is an obvious probability that it 

1 Theorie Analytique du Calcul des Probabilitcs. 



220 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

may be rendered practically useful. If worthless as 
an object of analysis, it may at least be valuable as a 
test. But it is the nature of man to insist upon a 
thing being just as he would make it, or to have none 
of it. We reject the benefit that we cannot com- 
prehend ; and like children crying for the moon, are 
rendered unhappy by seeing an object, however 
beautiful, which cannot be brought down to our level 
and given us as a plaything. 

Yet, on the Continent, men of science have, in 
some instances, been wise enough to profit by the 
extraordinary perceptions of the mesmeric state. It 
is related, in " Die Seherin von Prevnrst.*' that the 
sleepwaker, so called, was able to detect in certain 
stones a certain ingredient which always affected her 
in a particular manner ; and that a mineralogist made 
much use of this discrimination; subsequent experi- 
ment completely establishing the capacity of his 
informer. 1 

Thirdly. The organs of vision being under quite 
other than the normal conditions, a faculty analogous 
to sight is developed in mesmeric sleepwaking. 

In approaching the phenomena that result from 
such an overstepping of the ordinary limits of our 
nature, I deeply feel the difficulties that bar my way. 
That persons can hear and answer questions while 
in a kind of slumber may be conceived : but that 
they should see with their eyes shut comes not with- 

1 The same sleepwaker distinguished between twelve different 
kinds of grapes, and their several degrees of excellence, astringen- 
cy, &c. — Seherin von Prcvorst, vol. i. p. 8|, published at Stutgart 
and Tabingen. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIXG. 221 

in the compass of our faith. It is contrary to nature 
— it is utterly incredible. 

Even they who behold tlua fact are* when it is first 
presented to tliem. incapable of reasoning for very 
wonder. They perceive that the mesmeric patient's 
mode of vision is different from any within the range 
of their experience ; but what that mode may be 
appears to them a mystery unfathomable. 

Such were my own feelings on first witnessing an 
exhibition of what is called clair-voyance in mesmer- 
ism; and I now endeavor to recall them, in order 
that 1 may sympathize more with the astonishment or 
incredulity of my readers over the statements which 
1 am about to make Should they suspend their be- 
lief as to certain phenomena till they have actually 

beheld the alleged Wonder- with their OWn eyes, ] 

can scarcely blame them for b doubt which is, per- 
haps, but proper caution. Rather must I adde 
them in the words of Tre\ nanus, when speaking to 

Coleridge of mesmeric marvels, — •• I have ^hii 

what 1 am certain 1 would not have believed on your 
telling, and in all reason, therefore, I can neither 
expect nor wish that you should believe on mine." 
Even they who are most firmly convinced that mes- 
merism has its own mode of vision must be content 
toaccept the phenomenon, without having that surety 
of it which personal experience alone can give .of any 
thing. The mesmeriser witnesses the wonder, but 
does not feel it in himself: the sleepwaker, who is the 
subject of it, seems incapable of analyzing his new 
sensations while they last, still more of remembering 
them when they are over. The state of mesmerism 
19" 



222 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

is to him as death. 1 He cannot, when he awakes, 
reveal the mysteries of that great deep. His mes- 
meric feelings are to him as though they had never 
been ; and less favored, in this respect, even than 
they who have beheld him in his unusual condition, 
he is forced to take his own actions upon trust, and 
to exercise his own faith, while he draws so largely 
upon the realizing faculty in others. 

It is manifest, then, that we cannot believe in the 
clairvoyance of sleepwakers, in the same manner 
that we believe and know that we ourselves see with 
our eyes. It is a fact which transcends our present 
understanding. 

To what end, then, it may be asked, should I 
state phenomena which will be believed by few, and 
perfectly comprehended by none ? Because many 
things that are mysteries, are, nevertheless, profitable 
subjects of contemplation. Whatever is beyond our 
actual state of being is confessedly out of the pale of 
empirical knowledge ; yet shall we, on that account, 
banish the higher developments of nature from our 
thoughts, or even from our own scientific examina- 
tion ? Were all our ideas confined to that which we 
certainly know, the domain of our intellect would be 
limited indeed. Besides, by careful study, we may 
always extend, though we cannot complete, our appre- 
hension of things above us ; and, by discovering their 
analogy to things already known, bring them at least 

1 I once asked a young lady, who was in sleepwalking, why, on 
awaking, she forgot all that she did with such apparent intelli- 
gence. Her answer was, a Des qu'on est magnetise on est comme 
mort." 






MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 223 

nearer to our experience. Clearly then, where there 
is so much room for progress, it is our duty to ad- 
vance, remembering that the point where w r e should 
abandon enterprise has not yet been decided. In 
the present instance, the objects that I propose to 
myself are these : — To show in our present being 
the elements of a future existence ; to prove that our 
actual senses are limitations of our percipient power; 
and that, in proportion as the mind is detached from 
them, it acts more Largely, overcoming obstacles 
which, by means of our usual organs, it is impossible 
to surmount. It may be. also, that the facts on 
which I found mans capacity of development, being 
supported by good testimony, may convince some 
who have hitherto been incredulous, and may supply 
others, who already believe, with additional light to 
guide them further on their way, 

1 have already stated thai I have seen sleepwakers 
descry objects, when their eyes were, to all appear- 
ance, perfectly closed ; but my experiments on this 
head were not so rigorous, but that it might still be 
objected that mesmeric patients, like certain politi- 
cians, 

" See through all things with their half-shut eyes." 

I now proceed to show that, in many cases, such 
a supposition is untenable ; and that the mesmeric 
sleepwaker may have a mode of vision to which the 
usual conditions of sight are altogether wanting. 

The first time that I mesmerised Anna M , a 

workbox, which she had never seen before, was held 
before her. She stooped her forehead towards it, in 



224 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

a manner that struck me, and immediately named 
what it was. The box having been opened, the 
sleepwaker again bent her forehead till it was nearly 
parallel with its surface ; then rapidly named the va- 
rious objects it contained ; and, taking them up one 
by one in her hand, seemed desirous of examining 
them more particularly. But, to my surprise, she 
waved the articles about before her, as if trying in 
what point of view she could best descry them, hold- 
ing them to various parts of her face and forehead, 
and exclaiming, as if perplexed, " Where, then, are 
my eyes ? " At length she seemed best satisfied, 
when holding objects before her forehead, at the dis- 
tance of a few inches, declaring that she saw them 
most distinctly there. In order to put her assertions 
to the proof, I held my watch before the forehead of 
the sleepwaker, without descending it to the level of 
her eyes. She took it from me, and, not lowering it 
in the least, held it so turned as that it formed an 
acute angle with her forehead, immediately above 
the eyebrow. It is to be remarked that she thus pre- 
sented the watch to her forehead, first on the right 
side, then on the left, as if to submit it to the scru- 
tiny of a double organ. After this she named the 
exact hour and minute. The hands having been al- 
tered, she found the time with equal correctness. 

A poppy being held before her forehead, she said, 
" I see a red flower ; but I do not exactly know its 
name." 

Remembering that an experienced mesmeriser had 
told me that sleepwakers, in general, perform most 
readily anything which gives them pleasure in their 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 225 

waking state, and observing, in conformity with this 

statement, that Anna M , who was an expert 

needle-woman, took particular interest in the work- 
box and its appendages, I proposed to her to proceed 
with a piece of work which was at hand. She im- 
mediately took the work, and, holding it always on a 
level with her forehead, went on methodically with 
the hem of the piece of muslin I had given her. 
When necessary, she turned down anew fold ; and, in 
every respect, performed her task as well as she could 
have done awake. The work, submitted to female 
judgment, was pronounced to be a capital piece of 
sempstress-craft, the stitches being even and not one 
of them dropped. 

After this, we often gave Anna M work to do 

io the mesmeric stele, when parties of ten or twelve 
persons have been present, to witness her extraordi- 
nary development of vision. She continued to hold 
every thing to her fori head ; and with her hands 
raised to that level, in a position which, under ordi- 
nary circumstances, would be difficult and painful, 
has embroidered delicate flowers upon muslin, and 
even threaded her needle, without apparent effort. 

As it is my sincere desire to give a correct picture 
of mesmeric sleepwaking, I would on no account 
represent this power of vision as greater than it really 
was, or omit the inconsistencies which attended its 
exercise. That it was by no means even or constant 
cannot but be acknowledged, though I am by no 
means prepared to develope the cause of its caprices. 
Thus Anna, though giving incontestable proofs of 
vision by the forehead, could not be brought to dis- 



226 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

tinguish printed or written letters in the mesmeric 
state, except on one occasion, when she read her own 
name, which I had written in a large hand, and held 
at once before her forehead. It seemed to me that 
her new visual faculty was always in its best condi- 
tion when spontaneously exerted, and that any effort 
on her part, any over-anxiety to fulfil our requisitions, 
marred it altogether. I have often asked her to name 
an object, which I have allowed her to examine as she 
would ; but she has not named it, though apparently 
striving earnestly to do so. Again, she has indicated 
other things spontaneously when it was quite impos- 
sible for her to have discerned them in the ordinary 
manner. It was when she was sitting quietly, and 
apparently forgetful that she was an object of obser- 
vation, that she displayed the most remarkable phe- 
nomena of vision. One instance however is better 
than a thousand assertions. She was sitting with her 
head so much bent down as to bring the upper part 
of her forehead parallel to the wall of the apartment. 
In this position, with her eyes closed, it was impossi- 
ble for her to have seen, in any usual way, objects 
that were immediately fronting her. So placed, I 
observed her smile, and asked her why she did so ? 
" I am smiling," she said, " because I am pleased to 

see Mrs. opposite to me." " You see her, then. 

well ? " I inquired. " Yes ; she has a cup of tea in 
her hand." Upon this, the lady in question adroitly 
changed the cup of tea for a book ; upon which 
Anna immediately remarked, " But now she has taken 
a book." The lady then opened the book, and held 
it by the two sides, spread out exactly on a level 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 227 

with the forehead of the sleepwaker, who said directly, 
" Oh ! she holds the book quite open by its two 
ends." 

This experiment, neither suggested nor in any way 
conducted by myself, was interesting to me in no 
trifling degree, and was convincing to all who wit- 
nessed it. 

Another singular circumstance was, that no one 
could put on an ugly mask that lay about the room, 
and to which Anna, in her mesmeric state, had a 
great aversion, without her testifying, by faces ex- 
pressive of dislike, that she was aware of the circum- 
stance. We have tried this, when the sleepwaker 
was occupied by other things, and with every pre- 
caution, of making no noise. & c. : yet the result was 
always the same. 

When placed before a looking-glass, she could in- 
dicate, more correctly than at any other time, the 
gestures of persons standing near her, and seen by 
reflection. I have pulled out her comb, and she has 
arranged her hair again perfectly before a mirror, 
holding her forehead parallel to its surface. Being 
asked if she saw herself with her eyes open or shut, 
she replied, " Open, to be sure ; " and, when I rea- 
soned with her on this point, she replied, " I see as 
if my eyes were open ; and so they must appear to 
me open." It is singular that another sleepwaker 
gave me exactly the same answers under the same 
circumstances. I shall refer again to the subject, 
which is of metaphysical importance. 

A gentleman who was once present during a mes- 
merisation of Anna M , being placed " en rap- 



228 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

port" with her, laid his hand upon her forehead, 
when she exclaimed, " Why do you cover my eyes? " 
He then touched her eyes, and asked, " What part 
of your face am I touching now ? " The sleep waker 
seemed perplexed, and at length answered, " It is a 
part of my cheek, is it not ? " 

When asked to point out where different persons 
were placed in the apartment, during her sleep- 
waking, she never failed to do so, however their re- 
spective positions might be changed ; leaning her 
forehead forward all the time, and presenting it to 
each individual. At the instant of recognising each 
person she always gave one or two convulsive starts, 
as if her forehead came in contact with some invisi- 
ble thing. 

The account that she gave of her visual perceptions 
was sufficiently confused. These are her own words, 
relative to this subject, taken down, on one occasion, 
by a friend : — " It is all clear through my forehead. 
Sometimes I see so clear ! But then, again, there is 
a sort of light cloud that comes over the clearness, 
and then I can hardly see any thing. I do not see 
as with two eyes, but here (passing her hand across 
her forehead), with my brain." 

Already, in various accounts of experiments, I 

have mentioned E. A , a boy aged fifteen, whom 

I had opportunities of frequently mesmerising. This 
patient, of all whom I have ever seen, manifested in 
sleepwaking the most extraordinary development of 
visual power. As I have before said, he had been, 
in childhood, a natural sleepwaker : and I now add, 
on the testimony of his father, that he would some- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 229 

times rise in the night, take out his flute, (an instru- 
ment which he was studying professionally,) place 
music before him, and play from notes, continuing 
to turn over the leaves of the music-book correctly, 
although his eyes were closely shut. On one occa- 
sion, while his father was watching him in a paroxysm 
of this kind, the only light in the apartment, a lamp, 
went suddenly out : but the sleepwaker continued to 
play as before, and was heard to turn over the leaves 
of his music until he had come to the end of the 
piece, which, moreover, he could not execute without 
book. Thus, it will be pereei\ed, there w T as in this 
sleepwaker a sort of natural ground for the develop- 
ment of extraordinary vision ; and it was this con- 
sideration which led me. after having heard the anec- 
dotes above related, to request the boy to submit 
himself to the effects of mesmerism, lie consented 
to a trial, the result of which will show how careful 
persons ought to be in deciding, from one or two un- 
successful experiments, that a patient is insusceptible 

of mesmerisation. I had mesmerised E. A twice 

(each time an hour), and he had shown no symptom 
of being affected by any influence. I should not 
have made a third trial, but for the following circum- 
stance : — I had thrown Anna M into mesmeric 

sleepwaking before a large party of persons, amongst 

whom was E. A . I think I have every reason 

to affirm that the sleepwaker did not know any thing 

whatever respecting E. A , not even his name, 

nor that I had attempted to mesmerise him ; yet, be- 
ing accidentally near him, she said to me, (as if guided 
by that extraordinary instinct, respecting all that re- 
20 



230 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

lates to the mesmeric state, which I have before 
noticed as characteristic of true sleepwaking,) " You 
should mesmerise this young man : he is a natural 
sleepwaker ; and will become very clair-voyant" I 
answered that I had already tried to mesmerise the 
boy, and that I had failed in my object. " You 
should try again/' replied the sleepwaker, " and you 
will succeed." But before relating how truly this 
prophecy was accomplished, and its further results, I 
must observe, in order to remove all suspicion of 

Anna M 's sincerity, that in recommending me 

to mesmerise E. A she was speaking strongly 

against her own interest, and even her own general 
feelings ; for, with a sort of sentiment that may be 
called mesmeric jealousy, she never could endure me 
to mesmerise any one but herself. Then, again, I 
was endeavoring to educate her powers of mesmeric 
vision, in the hope that she might gain the prize 
offered by the academy of medicine, at Paris, to a 
sleepwaker who could read without the aid of the 
eyes ; and, knowing that attention to any one else 
must, in a degree, distract me from this object, she 
had every reason to fear a rival in my mesmeric 
graces. Moreover, in order to avoid giving her the 
least uneasiness, I carefully concealed from her my 

relations with E. A ; and as, when awake, she 

forgot wholly the events of her sleepwaking, she 
never knew (as far as I can judge) either that I had 

mesmerised E. A at any time, or that there was 

any question of my doing so. 

Having said thus much in justice to Anna M , 

(a precaution not unnecessary in the present hostility 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 231 

to mesmerism,) I proceed to state that, the third time 

I mesmerised E. A , he, at the end of an hour, 

passed so far into sleepwaking as to be able to an- 
swer questions without awaking — questions of which 
he retained no recollection in his natural state. On 
a fourth mesmerisation, he manifested all the char- 
acteristic symptoms of mesmeric sleepwaking ; was 
able to move about with tolerable case ; and began 
to display those extraordinary phenomena of vision 
which I have prepared my reader to expect. These 
maybe divided into two classes — namely, such as 
presented themselves spontaneously, and such as 
were developed during a course of strict experiment. 
With regard to both it may be observed that 
there was exactly that progress in their develop- 
ment which attends the education of a new faculty. 
At first, the patient could only descry the larger 
objects around him, or such as most interested him, 
or to which he was the most habituated. Thus, 
though able, in the early stages of his sleepwaking, 
to discriminate between the persons present in an 
apartment, and though testifying, in all that related 
to music, great powers of sight, (for, from the first, he 
could, while mesmerised, write out music with pre- 
cision.) yet, for a long period, he found considerable 
difficulty in reading from a book — always complain- 
ed of the smallness of the type, and could rarely 
be prevailed upon to look at more than tw T o or three 
words at a time. Subsequently, his eyes being 
always firmly shut, (as far as the strictest observation 
could determine,) he was able to read any number of 
words in the minutest type with perfect ease, and to 



232 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

discern small and large objects, near or distant, with 
exactly the same facility of vision which is possessed 
by a waking person. In proof of this I may mention 
that I and the members of my family have seen him, 
when in the mesmeric state, thread a small needle, 
and sew a button on his coat, and, again, distin- 
guish minute letters on a seal which a gentleman 
showed him, and which I could not make out myself. 
At another time, in mesmerism, he played on the 
flute a piece of music which he had never seen be- 
fore, from a book that was set up before him at the 
distance of some feet ; and once beincr mesmerised 
out of doors, and led to a spot where he had never 
been, he described all its features, and indicated the 
form and position of the distant mountains. This 
power of perception, analogous to sight, seemed 
principally to reside in the forehead. Whatever 
objects he took up to examine he immediately car- 
ried there ; and once, in the presence of Dr. Foissac, 
at Paris, he, being given a set of eye-glasses which 
he had never seen when awake, of eight different 
colors, shut up in a tortoise-shell case, unfolded them. 
and applying one, at hazard, to his forehead, without 
descending it to the level of his eyes, exclaimed, 
cc Every thing appears blue to me ! ,? at the same 
time, boy-like, imitating the gestures of a Parisian 
dandy, and observing that he should like to show off 
his pretty lorgnette in the street. The glass which 
he had accidentally chosen was, in fact, blue. Sub- 
sequently, he at various times has named the princi- 
pal tints of the eight glasses correctly, when present- 
ed to his forehead in any order. The same result 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 233 

took place when his eyes were bandaged. It was, 
however, remarkable that a powerful magnifying 
glass being placed before his forehead was not per- 
ceived by him to enlarge objects, though he read in 
a book, through the glass, with perfect ease. 

Though the power of vision was greatest in the 
forehead, yet at limes, and especially when he was 
excited, and not in any way called upon to exhibit, 
(for such requisitions often seemed to fetter his facul- 
ties,) he seemed to see on every side of him, as if his 
head were one organ of visual perception. This is 
no exaggeration, as the following instance will show : 
— He was once sitting on a sola, in the mesmeric 
state, when a gentleman with whom he was well 
acquainted came behind the sola, and made all 
kinds of antics. On this, the deepwakei exclaimed, 

"Oh, Mr. 1) ! do not suppose I cannot see 

you : you are now doing so and so (describing all 
Mr. I) s gestures.) Vou have now taken a paper- 
cutter into your hand, and now a knife. Indeed, 
\ on had better go away, and not make yourself so 
ridiculous.' 5 Another time, he was sitting at a table, 
writing music, with his back to the door, when a 
servant entered the apartment, " Oh, Mademoiselle 

L ! is that you?" he said. " How quietly you 

stand there with your arms folded." He was quite 
correct in all he said. Directly after this I took up 
a bottle from a table behind the patient, and held it 
up to the back of his head, asking him if he knew 
what I held. He instantly replied, " A bottle, to be 



20* 



234 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

Having mentioned the principal phenomena of 
vision which E. A. spontaneously presented, I pro- 
ceed to state those which he manifested under strict 
experiment. 

Well convinced that doubts would exist, not only 
in the minds of others, but in my own, respecting the 
patient's manner of seeing, so long as there was the 
remotest possibility of his discerning objects through 
any aperture, however small, between the eyelids, I 
studied to put this out of the question by precautions 
so severe as to forbid imposition, and so varied as to 
supply that accumulated and concurring evidence 
which circumstances that contradict experience im- 
peratively require. 

1st. I laid the patient on a sofa, in bright day- 
light, with his face turned towards the window, and 
made him lean his head back until I could see com- 
pletely under his eyes. When he was so placed, I 
could have detected the slightest gleam of the eye 
through the smallest opening of the lids. I have 
then given him a book, from which he has read with 
ease, (holding it nearly parallel to his forehead,) 
while all the time I fixed my eyes earnestly on his, 
and yet could perceive not the slightest tendency in 
them to unclose. 

2dly. I laid the palms of my hands, the fingers 
pointing upwards, on the eyes of various persons, in 
such a manner as that the projecting parts of each 
hand should exactly fit into the concavities about the 
eyes. These persons assured me that, with their 
eyes so covered, they could see nothing whatever. I 
have given them cards or books in their hands, but 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 235 

by no efforts on their parts could they distinguish 
these objects. I have repeated the same experiment 
again and again upon E. A., in a state of sleepwak- 
ing, and never found that the palms of my hands in 
any way impeded his vision. He could see cards, or 
read in books, under the above circumstances, with 
perfect ease. I never felt any motion beneath my 
hand, as if the patient were trying to open his eyes ; 
nor did he evince the slightest inclination to draw 
his head back from the pressure of my hands. 

3dly. Standing behind the patient, I have laid my 
closed fingers over his eyes horizontally, or I have 
forcibly pressed down his lids with one finger of each 
hand. This, which, when tried on others, effectually 
impeded their Bight, made do alteration in the visual 
perceptions erf the sleepwaker. In order to avoid 
repetition. I here state, generally, that the efficacy 
of the means I employed to stop the eyes of my 
patient was always first proved upon the eyes of 
indifferent persons. I should remark, moreover, 
that the patient had no objection to permit any one 
who was previously placed "en rapport" with him, 
to try upon him all the above experiments. I there- 
fore usually engaged other persons to do this, in 
preference to myself, as the most satisfactory way of 
convincing them that there was no complicity be- 
tween me and my sleepwaker, and of bringing the 
matter home to their own business and bosoms. 
This manner of proceeding has shaken many from 
their incredulity. 

4thly. Having filled a couple of china eye-glasses 
with wadding, I, or some other person, held them 



236 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

firmly to the patient's closed eyes when in sleepwak- 
ing. This also made no difference in his visual 
perceptions. When the same eye-glasses have been 
applied without the wadding, notwithstanding their 
perfect opacity, the patient has declared that he could 
see the light very plainly through them ; and that 
they were so transparent that he could not conceive 
why we imagined they should prevent him from see- 
ing. 

5thly. I have tried various methods of bandaging 
the patient's eyes. I have tied a broad and thick 
silk handkerchief over them, and then I have held 
down with my fingers, or the palms of my hands, 
the whole of the bottom part of the bandage. This 
method seems to me as perfect as any. It did not at 
all impede the sleepwaker's vision. In addition to 
this, (the same result always ensuing,) I have laid 
strips of wadding over the eyes before applying the 
handkerchief, and I have firmly secured every pos- 
sible interstice between it and the cheek with cotton. 
In the presence of Dr. Foissac, strips of diachylum 
were added to all the above apparatus, in order to 
fasten down the edges of the handkerchief to the 
cheek ; but the sleepwaker saw as well as ever. On 
several occasions I bandaged his eyes, adding the 
cotton and the wadding before beginning to mes- 
merise him, when he has assured me that he could not 
distinguish day from night. Then, having passed 
into sleepwaking, he has immediately given proofs of 
perfect vision — quite as perfect, indeed, as that en- 
joyed by persons whose eyes are open and unbound. 
Again, on aw r aking, (the bandage never having been 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 237 

stirred during the whole period of his sleepwaking,) 
he has found himself in perfect darkness. The 
transition was marked. One moment, drawn by the 
strong attraction of my presence, he was following 
me about the room, through intricacies of chairs and 
tables, with perfect ease ; the next, he was standing 
helpless, not caring to be near me, and, if called 
upon, unable to move, except with a groping hesi- 
tation of a blindfold person. I remarked that he 
did not wake so easily with the bandage on as when 
he had no bandage. The action of the transverse 
passes that I used to that effect seemed modified by 
the interposing substance. The striking proofs of 
vision thai the patient gave, when properly ban- 
daged, were, that he read in books, and distinguished 
cards, their colors. Buit, &C*., often playing with me 
at various games upon them. I remarked that in 
sleepwaking he was quite adroit at the game of cas- 
sino. which 1 had almost vainly tried to teach him 
in the waking state. It will be allowed that for a 
person, even bandaged in a slovenly manner, to per- 
ceive, at a glance, the combinations on the board, 
would be no easy matter ; yet this he did with 
rapidity, completely bandaged as he was. 

6thly. I threw over the patient's head two thick 
and large towels, which covered him in front down 
to the hips. Through these he has read, holding the 
book at an angle with his forehead, and has distin- 
guished cards with perfect accuracy. This kind of 
experiment was occasionally varied. Sometimes the 
sleepwaker has been bandaged, and, in addition to 
this, a towel has been thrown over his head ; but the 



238 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

result was equally satisfactory. This power, how- 
ever, seemed to have its limits. The addition of a 
third towel greatly impeded the patient's vision, yet 
even thus he has distinguished cards. On one occa- 
sion, a visiter, instead of covering up the patient's 
eyes, enveloped the object to be seen in the folds of 
a napkin. The experimenter, in order, if possible, 
to mislead myself, the sleepwaker, and all w r ho were 
present, gave us to understand that he had placed 
one card only in the napkin, (he had performed the 
operation with his back turned,) but the patient was 
not to be deceived. At first, indeed, he seemed 
puzzled ; but even this transient perplexity elicited a 
curious proof that he saw not only through the triple 
folds of the napkin, but through the back of one of 
the cards. He said, " There seems to me to be a 
Jive, but the points are not of the same colors — 
" Oh ! " he exclaimed, after a pause, " how could I 
be so stupid ! there are two cards. One is the ace 
of hearts, the other the four of clubs." He was per- 
fectly right. The four of clubs had its face upper- 
most, the ace was laid under it, and, in order to form 
a five, the sleepwaker must have seen the ace under- 
neath the other card. 

7thly. One day I was curious to observe whether 
my patient could discriminate colors or forms, on ap- 
parently flat surfaces, by the touch, as the blind some- 
times have been known to do. To this end, I held 
an open book over a little round French paper box, 
which had no distinction of top or bottom, except 
that there was a picture on what was meant for the 
upper side. I gave the sleepwaker the box into his 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 239 

hand, (holding the book always so as to screen the 
object from him,) and asked if he knew whereabouts 
the picture was. He immediately turned it right side 
uppermost, and with his finger pointed out the prin- 
cipal features of the little painting — a shepherdess 
sitting under a tree, &c, c * Then," I said, " you do 
perceive by your fingers.** "No," he replied, "but 
I see through the book." Desirous of testing this 
more perfectly, 1 held open a large book exactly be- 
fore his face, and, taking up, at hazard, a card from 
a pack that lay near me, I kept the figured side con- 
cealed against my hand, until I could turn it towards 
the sleepwaker. immediately behind the book. Stoop- 
ing his forehead forward, till it nearly touched the 
back of the volume, lie told correctly what the card 
was. This experiment I frequently repeated, with 
equal success.; sometimes varying it. by bandaging 
the patient's eyes before 1 held the book before them. 
The additional obstacle seemed to make no difference. 
Sometimes 1 have placed a card, with due precau- 
tion, in the midst of a book which I kept open only 
by the interposition of a finger, holding the face of 
the card pressed against the leaves of the book, and 
thus entirely concealing it. I have then held the 
book upright before the patient, who has bent his 
forehead forward, as usual, till it was parallel to the 
cover of the book, and has then told the card cor- 
rectly. What is singular is that, if I withdrew my 
finger and quite closed the book, the experiment failed. 
The sleepwaker said that the reason of this was that 
the vibrations of the medium, by which he pretended 
to perceive objects, were too much intercepted by the 



240 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

perfectly closed book. I should observe, once for all, 
that, when I record the sayings of my sleepwakers, 
it is not because I give faith to them, but for reasons 
to which I shall advert hereafter. Indeed, nothing 
can be more contradictory or unsatisfying than the 
account which mesmerised persons render of their 
own mode of sensation. For instance, E. A. told 
me once that he saw through the book that was held 
between him and an object ; but at another time he 
propounded a long and confused theory, by which 
he made it appear that his sight did not penetrate the 
obstacle, but received an impression from certain rays, 
that did not come to his eye in direct lines, but were 
bent round the edges of the book. 

8thly. Another class ^of precautions which I have 
taken, to convince myself that the mechanism of the 
eye had nothing to do with the mesmeric mode of 
vision, consisted in spreading out a pack of cards on 
a table, face downward, (frequently changing the 
pack, lest any of the cards might, in any way, be- 
come known to the sleepwaker.) and in sliding a card, 
at random, on to the palm of my hand, so that its 
faced side was never for a moment exposed until I 
had lifted it above the patient's head, when I pre- 
sented it at once to his forehead or occiput. In the 
same way I have taken up a written paper, previously 
prepared, or a book, which I have not opened until 
it was above the level of the patient's eyes ; and I 
have held these objects to various parts of his head. 
The following are the results of observations made 
under the above circumstances : — 

The sleepwaker's power of perception seemed to 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 241 

become weaker as it withdrew from the region of 
ordinary sight. I have known him read half a page 
from a book which was held immediately above the 
eyebrow ; and he found but little difficulty in telling 
any number of cards which were held in the same 
position. He did not at all like to have objects held 
behind him ; saying that perception by the occiput 
was very fatiguing, and cost him an effort which did 
him harm. It certainly is a fact that, after he had told 
things in this way, he used to complain of uneasiness 
on awaking. Still he gave indubitable proofs that he 
could occasionally exercise, by means of the back or 
other parts of his head, a faculty analogous to sight. 
The following are the most striking instances of 
this : — 

I wrote in my pocket-book (holding it above the 
patient's head) the words. " Voule/.-vous aller a 
Milan?" I then presented the writing immediately 
to his occiput. He immediately called out, " Oh ! 
je vois la le nom d'une grande ville !" and then, 
word by word, he seemed to make out the whole 
sentence, which he at length repeated correctly. 

On another occasion, I took up a book at random 
and opened it just behind the patient's ear, holding 
the book parallel to the side of his head. I had 
opened it at the beginning of a chapter. His first 
exclamation was, " There's a great deal of white on 
that page." I said nothing, but continued to hold 
the book as before, when he began to repeat some 
numbers that were on the page, — " 1425, 1426." 
Then, without pausing, he read, distinctly and cor- 
rectly, the title of the chapter, which was as fol- 

21 



242 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 



lows : — " Scenes Historiques. — La Main Droite du 
Sire de Giac (1425, 1426.) m He continued with 
one or two words of the chapter itself, but suddenly 
broke off, in a way that was habitual with him, pushed 
away the book and declared himself fatigued. 

In telling cards by means of various parts of his 
head, he liked to observe certain conditions which 
were executed either by himself or at his direction. 
His favorite mode of proceeding was to lift his own 
hand above his head, and to take the card from me, 
which he held at a certain distance from the part 
where I told him to exercise his perception, observ- 
ing that no one ever put a thing they wanted to see 
close to their eyes. When I held the card myself, 
and approached it nearer than he liked, he always 
gave indubitable proofs of being aware of the cir- 
cumstance, begging me to place the object farther 
off. Sometimes, when he found a difficulty in ascer- 
taining the card, he would beg me to breathe on it ; 
and, when I had done so, he would tell it directly. 
At other times, he would hold the card horizontally 
above his head ; and then, without stirring the centre 
of the card from its place, would dip down first one 
end and then the other, like the two extremities of a 
see-saw. This he called " Le moyen electrique." 
He was generally successful in telling cards in this 
manner, sometimes on the first operation, sometimes 
after two or three repetitions of it. 

Occasionally I have placed the patient's own hand 
on a table with the palm uppermost, and have glided 

1 Taken from a work called " Dodecation, ou le Livre des douze." 
Bruxelles, 1836. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 243 

on to it a card drawn at random from the pack, with 
the face downward. Then I have told him to what 
part of his head he should lift the card ; but it has 
often happened that, while in the act of conveying 
the card (the back always uppermost), he has said, 
U I need not trouble myself to take the card any far- 
ther, for I know already what it is." On these 
occasions he was sure to be right : and, notwithstand- 
ing his assertions to the contrary. I was by this, and 
other minute circumstances, ted to imagine that his 
whole nervous system shared something of the per- 
cipient faculty which more peculiarly manifested 
itself in the forehead. His own account of this was, 
that h< i received perceptions through the motions of 
a fluid, which was conducted by the brain generally, 
but was transmitted with the greatest facility through 
the orbits of the eyes and the region immediately 
above them. 1 ; the ball of the eye 

had no share in the production of i neiic vision, 

but that the impression was made direct upon the 
brain ; moreover, thai the sensations caused in him 
by the motions of the fluid resembled those excited 
by light. When cards, &c, were held behind his 
head, he rarely distinguished the whole object at 
once ; but (as in the case of a card, for instance) he 
would first name the suit and color, then count the 
pips one by one, and, finally, name the whole card. 
When questioned (not by myself, but by a person 
who took interest in my experiments) why he did not 
tell the object at once, he replied, " The light that 
seems to strike upon it falls partially, and first I see 
one part of the card, then another." 



244 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

9thly. I have been making still larger and larger 
demands upon the belief of my reader, and now I 
am about, perhaps, to revolt him altogether ; but, hav- 
ing once undertaken to give a faithful relation of that 
which I have witnessed, can I draw back from the 
accomplishment of my task ? No ; while conscious 
that I only speak the strictest truth, I am prepared 
even to have that truth doubted. Time will " bring 
in its revenges." 

Remembering that E. A , on his father's tes- 
timony, had, in natural sleep waking, seemed to per- 
ceive objects in total darkness, I was curious to ascer- 
tain whether, in mesmeric sleepwaking, he would 
manifest a similar phenomenon of sensation. I there- 
fore, having mesmerised him, took him with me into 
a dark press or closet, of which I employed a friend 
to hold to the door, in such a manner as that no ray of 
light should penetrate through crevice or keyhole. 
Then, like the hero of " The Curse of Kehama," 

" I opened my eyes, and 1 closed them, 

And the blackness and blank were the same." 

My utmost efforts to see my hand only produced 
those sparks and flashes which waver before the eye 
in complete obscurity. Having thus ascertained the 
perfect darkness of the closet, I drew a card at hazard, 
from a pack with which I had provided myself, and 
presented it to the sleepwaker. He said it was so 
and so. I repeated this to my friend, whom I then 
told to open the door. The admission of light es- 
tablished the correctness of the sleepwaker : it was 
the card he had named. The experiment repeated 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 245 

four times gave the same satisfactory result. This 
peculiar development of vision was, like the other 
faculties of the sleepwaker, capable of improvement 
through exercise. At first, he seemed unable to read 
in the dark ; then, like a person learning the alphabet, 
he came to distinguish large single letters, which I 
had printed for him on card ; and at length he could 
make out whole sentences of even small print. While 
thus engaged in deciphering letters, or in ascertaining 
cards, the patient always held one of my hands, and 
sometimes laid it on his brow, affirming that it in- 
creased his clctir-voycince. He would also beg me to 
breathe upon the objects which lie desired to see. 
He used to declare that, the more complete the dark- 
ness was, the better he could exercise his new mode 
of perception : asserting that, when in the dark, he 
did not come to the knowledge of objects in the same 
manner as when he was in the light : " Quand je suis 
dans robseurite." he -aid, (C il ya une lumiere qui 
sort de mon oerveau, et qui tappe justement sur l'objet ; 
tandis que, dans la lumiere, l'impression monte 
depuis l'objet jusqu' a mon cerveau." Often, when 
I could not see a ray of light, he used to complain 
that the closet was not dark enough, and, in order 
to thicken the obscurity, he would wrap up his head 
in a dressing gown which hung in the closet. At 
other times he would thrust his head into the re- 
motest corner of the press. His perception of colors, 
when exercised in obscurity, sustained but little 
alteration. He has named correctly the different 
tints of a set of colored glasses. It was, however, 
worthy of remark that he w T as apt to mistake between 

21* 



246 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

the harmonic colors, green and red. not only when 
he was in the dark, but when his eyes were ban- 
daged. 

Many persons can bear testimony to the accuracy 
of the above experiments ; and I refer to the Appen- 
dix for proofs that I sought for witnesses and invited 
scrutiny, feeling that such things as I had to narrate 
could scarcely be credited on the word of a single 
person. 

Desirous of neither exaggerating nor detracting 
from the powers of mesmeric vision, I subjoin a few 
general remarks upon what I observed of its devel- 
opment in the case of E. A , begging the reader 

at the same time to remark the coincidence between 
the feelings of this sleepw T aker and of Mademoiselle 

M . Like the latter, he declared that he was not 

always " i ' the vein " to exercise his faculty, and that 
it was a power which came and went. He would 
sometimes say to me, " Do not think that I can always 
see a thing when I desire it ; on the contrary, the 
more I wish the less I can do." In conformity with 
this, I observed that he always did things best when 
summoned to them without preparation, without any 
idea of difficulty being raised in his mind. It was 
also evident that he did not like being experimented 
upon, and hence I was obliged to use a little manage- 
ment with him, in order to make it appear that he 
w r as acting without constraint. Very often it hap- 
pened that he would seem stupid, and unable to per- 
ceive a single thing, when, all at once, the power 
would, as it were, descend upon him ; and he would 
suddenly read a whole page from a book, or tell live 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 247 

or six cards running. In the latter case he was not 
accustomed to name the cards separately, as he looked 
at them, but afterwards, from memory. The first 
time he did this, I thought he did not know the cards. 
I showed him one, and he said, without telling what 
it was. •• Now show me another/' This also was put 
aside, and so on to five ; when suddenly, to my no 
small astonishment, he repeated from memory the 
Whole live, correctly in their order. This was one of 
his sell-originated eapriees. Another was, that he 
would occasionally refuse to tell a card which he, 
however, manifestly knew. That he did so I discov- 
ered in the following manner : — He had refused to tell 
a card. Baying, " I know it. however." " Indeed/' I re- 
plied, " 1 doubt that." M Well)" he said, " ask me what 
the card is. afl BOOB BE 1 awake. Impress on my mind 
that I am to remember it then, and I promise you 
then to tell it you."' He kept his word exactly. It 
is not to be supposed, however, but that, by exercising 
my influence over the will of the sleepwaker, I could 
at any time compel him to execute whatever was in 
the compass of his ability ; but I preferred allowing 
his mesmeric character to develope itself sponta- 
neously. By pursuing a similar course with all my 
sleepwakers, I was enabled to ascertain that the mes- 
meric state, though broadly marked, has, in addition 
to its striking and invariable characteristics, slight 
shades of difference which individualize it in the 
individual cases. These generally consist in some 
little caprice, or, rather, odd development of sensi- 
tiveness. For instance, E. A could never endure 

spades amongst the cards I show r ed him, and Theo- 



248 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING, 

dore's sister shuddered and showed marked dislike if 
wadding were presented to her, even in a box. 

I have also remarked that sleepw r akers, when once 
disturbed by the presence of objects that influence 
them disagreeably, become indisposed to a further 
exertion of their faculties. Any thing like a doubt of 
their sincerity will also distress them exceedingly, 
and obstruct the exercise of their powers. Moreover, 
they display extraordinary penetration in discovering 
which of the persons around them entertain feelings 
of incredulity or suspicion ; and, should they have to 
encounter a large amount of unbelief and hostility to 
mesmerism, they will become reserved and irritable, 
and will fail in everything they undertake. Thus I 

have known E. A , after having told a card held 

behind a book, seem quite incapable of repeating the 
effort, from the moment that a certain person, who 
was sceptical about mesmerism, entered the apart- 
ment. I found, too, that the sensibility of the sleep- 
waker might be exhausted by a multiplicity of exper- 
iments, or their too rapid repetition. Sometimes, 
after having named many objects correctly, he would 
begin to make mistakes, and evidently to guess instead 
of to perceive. At other moments, he would push 
impatiently away from him the cards, books, &c, that 
were presented to him, and exclaim, " Maintenant je 
ne puis plus." Again, when allowed to remain quiet 
for awhile, he would recover his clair-voyance. in the 
same manner that the nervous energy of persons in 
the normal state, when impaired through over-excite- 
ment, returns to its pristine functions after an inter- 
val of repose. That my own state of mind, or body. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 249 

or both, influenced the sleepwaker, it was impossible 
to doubt. Nor can this seem surprising, when it is 
considered that I was the depository and the dis- 
penser of the agency which threw the patient into 
the condition of clair-voyance. I observed that on 
days when my thoughts were pre-occupied, or my 
health a little out of order, E. A , in the mes- 
meric state, was dull, spiritless, and disinclined to 
exertion. The variations of the atmosphere seemed 
also to affect him. In dry clear weather his mes- 
meric faculties were best developed ; on damp misty 
days they were less alert; and when thunder storms 
wen passing they were singularly disordered. Mes- 
meric passes, renewed at intervals during the period 
of sleepwaking, were, under all circumstances, favor- 
able to the improvement or the maintaining of the 
patient's clair-voyana . 

It is absolutely essential that the experimentalist in 
mesmerism should be acquainted with particulars 
such as the above, and should inform himself of all 
the conditions under which mesmeric sleepwaking is 
either promoted or impeded. This has been too 
much forgotten. Many failures, which have stamped 
mesmerism as an imposition, may be attributed, I am 
convinced, to the action of disturbing causes, or the 
absence of those circumstances which are requisite to 
insure success. That this has not been acknowledged 
on all hands is, perhaps, as much the fault of mes- 
merisers themselves as of their opponents. The for- 
mer, proud of the faculties of their patients, do not 
like to admit that these faculties are variable and lia- 
ble to a number of restrictions. They therefore fail to 



250 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

forewarn those whom they invite to witness their 
proceedings that the whole exhibition may chance to 
be a failure, and that the clair-voyant of to-day may 
be nothing remarkable to-morrow. What is the con- 
sequence of this mistaken disingenuousness ? Even 
they, who, if duly advertised of the true state of 
things, would be the first to acquiesce in the necessi- 
ties of the case, are revolted by finding a discre- 
pancy between the performance and the promise — 
the fact and their expectation of the fact. Mesme- 
risers, then, cannot be too careful in stating all the 
drawbacks to their success ; and, at the same time, 
every person should, in all fairness, concede to mes- 
meric experiments the same privilege which is ac- 
corded to all others, namely, a precognition of those 
causes which may render them difficult or impossible 
to be repeated. At present, it may be safely asserted 
that never was any subject capable of physical ex- 
periment submitted to such unjust requisitions as that 
of mesmerism. It has been expected to give the 
same results at all times and under all circumstances. 
The truth, however, is that mesmeric sleepwaking 
does not only present different degrees in different 
persons, but in the same. The patient may at one 
time be mesmerised, but not to clair-voijance ; at 
another he may display the most admirable faculties 
of the mesmeric state. 

Having ascertained, in this and the previous case, 
that persons under the mesmeric conditions could 
exercise a faculty analogous to sight, without the 
intervention of the ordinary apparatus of vision. I 
was desirous still further to inquire how far the optic 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 251 

nerve played a part in this development of the sen- 
tient powers. In order to solve this question, it ap- 
peared to me essential to mesmerise a person in whom 
the optic nerves were inefficient or destroyed. Should 
such a person be found to see in the mesmeric state, 
it would thenceforth be evident that man might pos- 
sibly, in certain states, exhibit a perception of objects 
of sight which could have nothing in common with 
the system of ordinary vision. 

Soon after the idea had arisen in my mind, acci- 
cident threw in my way a lad of nineteen years of 
age, a Swiss peasant, who for three years had nearly 
lost the faculty of sight. His eyea betrayed but little 
appearance of disorder: and the gradual decay of 
vision which he had experienced was attributed to a 
paralysis of the optic nerve, resulting from a scrofu- 
lous tendency in the constitution of the patient. 
The bow whom I shall call by his christian name of 
Johann, was intelligent, mild-tempered, extremely 
sincere, and extremely unimaginative. He had never 
heard of mesmerism till I spoke of it before him, and 
I then only so far enlightened him on the subject as 
to tell him that it was something which might, per- 
haps, benefit his sight. At first he betrayed some 
little reluctance to submit himself to experiment, 
asking me if I were going to perform some very 
painful operation upon him ; but, when he found 
that the whole affair consisted in sitting quiet, and 
letting me hold his hands, he no longer felt any ap- 
prehension. 

Before beginning to mesmerise, I ascertained with 
as much precision as possible, the patient's degree of 



252 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

blindness. I found that he yet could see enough to 
perceive any large obstacle that stood in his way. 
If a person came directly before him, he was aware 
of the circumstance, but he could not at all distin- 
guish whether the individual were man or woman. 
I even put this to the proof. A lady of our society 
stood before him, and he addressed her as " mein 
herr" (sir). In bright sunshine, he could see a 
white object, or the color scarlet, when in a con- 
siderable mass, but made mistakes as to the other 
colors. Between small objects he could not at all 
discriminate. I held before him successively a book, 
a box, and a bunch of keys, and he could not dis- 
tinguish between them. In each case he saw some- 
thing, he said, like a shadow, but he could not tell 
what. He could not read one letter of the largest 
print by means of eyesight ; but he was very adroit 
in reading by touch, in books prepared expressly 
for the blind, running his fingers over the raised 
characters with great rapidity, and thus acquiring a 
perception of them. Whatever trifling degree of 
vision he possessed could only be exercised on very 
near objects : those which were at a distance from 
him he perceived not all. I ascertained that he 
could not see a cottage at the end of our garden, 
not more than a hundred yards off from where we 
were standing. 

These points being satisfactorily proved, I placed 
my patient in the proper position, and began to mes- 
merise. Five minutes had scarcely elapsed when I 
found that I produced a manifest effect upon the 
boy. He began to shiver at regular intervals, as if 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 253 

affected by a succession of slight electric shocks. 
By degrees this tremor subsided, the patient's eyes 
gradually closed, and in about a quarter of an hour 
he replied to an inquiry on my part, " Ich schlaffe, 
aber nicht ganz tief." (I sleep, but not soundly.) 
Upon this I endeavored to deepen the patient's slum- 
ber by the mesmeric passes, when suddenly he ex- 
claimed, his eyes being closed all the time, " I see ! — 
I see your hand ! I see your head." In order to put 
this to the proof, I held my head in various positions, 
which he followed with his finger : again, he told 
me accurately whether my hand was shut or open. 
" But," he said, on being further questioned, " I 
do not see distinctly. I see, as it were, sunbeams 
(sonnen strahlen) which dazzle me." " Do you 
think," I asked, " that mesmerism will do you good ? " 
" Ja freilich" (yes certainly) he replied: " repeated 
often enough it would cure me of my blindness." 

Afraid of fatiguing my patient, I did not trouble 
him with experiments ; and, his one o'clock dinner 
being ready for him, I dispersed his magnetic sleep. 
After he had dined I took him into the garden. As 
we were passing before some beehives he suddenly 
stopped, and seemed to look earnestly at them : — 
" What is it you see ?" I asked. " A row of bee- 
hives," he replied directly, and continued, " Oh ! 
this is wonderful ! I have not seen such things for 
three years." Of course I was extremely surprised ; 
for, though I had imagined that a long course of mes- 
merisation might benefit the boy, I was entirely un- 
prepared for so rapid an improvement in his vision. 
My chief object had been to develop the faculty of 
22 



254 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. ^ 

sight in sleepwaking ; and I can assure my readers 
that this increase of visual power in the natural state 
was to me a kind of miracle., as astonishing as it was 
unsought. My poor patient was in a state of abso- 
lute enchantment. He grinned from ear to ear, and 
called out, " Das ist prachtig I" (That is charming.) 
Two ladies now passed before us, when he said, " Da 
sind zwei frauenzimmer 1" (There go two ladies.) 
" How dressed ?" I asked. " Their clothes are of a 
dark color," he replied. This was true. I took my 
patient to a summer-house that commanded an ex- 
tensive prospect. I fear almost to state it, but, never- 
theless, it is perfectly true, that he saw and pointed 
out the situation of a village in the valley below us. 
I now brought Johann back to the house, when, in 
the presence of several members of my family, he 
recognized, at first sight, several small objects, (a 
flower-pot, I remember, amongst other things,) and 
not only saw a little girl, one of our farmer's children, 
sitting on the steps of a door, but also mentioned that 
she had a round cap on her head. In the house I 
showed Johann a book, which it will be remembered 
he could not distinguish before mesmerisation, and he 
named the object. But, though making great efforts, 
he could not read one letter in the book. Having 
ascertained this, I once more threw Johann into the 
mesmeric state, with a view to discovering how far a 
second mesmerisation would strengthen his natural 
evesight. As soon as I had awaked him. at the 
interval of half an hour, I presented him witli the 
same book, (one of Marryatt's novels.) when he ac- 
curately told me the larger letters of the title-page. 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 255 

which were as follow : — c; : Outward Bound." Jo- 
hann, belonging to an institution of the blind, sit- 
uated at some distance from our residence, I had, 
unhappily, only the opportunity of mesmerising him 
three times subsequently to the above successful 
trial. The establishment, also, of which he was a 
member, changed masters ; and, its new director 
having prejudices on the score of mesmerism, there 
were difficulties purposely thrown in the way of 
my following up that which I had so auspiciously 
begun. 

The following is the general result of my after 
experiments : — 

On first passing into the mesmeric state, Johann 
always spoke of a Kind of internal light, which he 

compared to sunbeam-, riiffnaing itself over the 

»n of the forehead. 

Whenever I pointed the tip- of my fingers towards 

his closed eyes, at the distance of about two inches, 
with a quick darting motion, he had the sensation of 
a flashing light, and sparks of fire passing, as it were, 
before him. 

Beiqg led up, accidentally, to a large mirror, when 
in sleepwaking, he called out that In 4 saw " eine 
grosse klarheit." (A great clearness.) Nevertheless, 
the mirror was in the shade. After this. I conducted 
him to a idas< door that led into the garden, through 
which the light of day Was shining brightly, but he 
made no remark ; and. on being questioned, declared 
that he was not sensible of any peculiar light. Again 
taken up to the mirror, he again said that he saw 
before him much light and clearness. By whatever 



256 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

route I led him up to the looking-glass, he was 
always aware when he came before it, though his 
eyes were perfectly closed. 

Occasionally I presented the points of my fingers 
to the mirror, in the same manner as to his forehead, 
in order to ascertain whether he would perceive any 
thing like reflected sparks, but the experiment did 
not succeed. 

Music seemed to have a pleasing effect upon him 
when in the mesmeric state ; and the sound of my 
voice always palpably increased the depth of his 
slumber. 

On first awaking from mesmeric erleepwaking, the 
patient's powers of vision were always stronger than 
at any other time ; but, in addition to this temporary 
benefit, there was a gradual bettering of \n< eye* 
sight, which, though less striking, was more valuable 
from its permanence. Bveti the external appearance 
of his eyes was improved, in the course of mes- 
merism, to a degree which attracted the notice, and 
excited the wonder, of the master of the institution 
to which Johann belonged. 

On one occasion, being rather indisposed. 1 found 
that I could not influence Johann so forcibly as 
usual ; so that, after long mesmerisation. I had only 
brought him as far as an imperfect sleep, in which he 
retained his consciousness. Having met with an 
account of Dr. Elliotson's experiments, by which it is 
proved that the mesmeric agency is capable of in- 
crease by means of other individuals cooperating 
with the mesmeriser ; having also experienced the 
truth of this when mesmerising the little sister of 



MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 257 

Mademoiselle M , conjointly with herself; I 

requested a friend, who was present, to aid me, by 
motions of the hand, in deepening the patient's slum- 
ber. Each of US held a hand of Johann, and each of 
us manipulated with the hand that remained at lib- 
erty. The effect was very remarkable. In a short 
time the patient passed into complete sleepwaking ; 
but that there was a remission of the mesmeric in- 
fluence, whenever m\ fir/end oeased to be in contact 
with me. was proved by this; Johann's head did 
not then follow my hand so readily ; and, at such 
moments, when questioned, he said that he did not 
deep bo profoundly. Hie patient being still uncon- 
scious, 1. being always in contact with him, drank 
half a glass <>t sherry, when he exclaimed, sponta- 
neously, "Das ist wolil stark. Das steigt mir im 
kopt." (That i- \< t\ strong. It mounts into my 
head.) 

The last tune that I mesmerised Johann was in 
the evening, by candle, or. rather, lam)) light. On 
this occasion lie manifested an extraordinary increase 
in mesmeric cktir-voyance, giving proofs that he had 
sensations, analogous to sight, erf a fir stronger nature 
than those which his visual organs could afford him 

in the waking state W it 1 1 ease he indicated the 

relative positions of the party present, consisting of 
three persons besides myself; and. though the seve- 
ral individuals often and silently exchanged places, 

he continued to show that he was acquainted with 

the exact situation of each. Occasionally Ik.' would 
remark, and always with perfect correctness, that a 
lady was smiling and pointing her finger at him. 
23 



258 MESMERIC SLEEP WAKING. 

Three dahlias, which were respectively of a bright 
scarlet, deep crimson, and yellow color, were held 
before his closed eyelids. He discriminated between 
them with singular accuracy, saying, a Das ist feuer- 
roth, das ist dunkel-roth, und das ist gelb." He 
also distinguished a large leaf, which was held before 
him, to be green. 

The lady above alluded to handed me a nosegay, 
directing me, in English, what to do with it. Agree- 
ably to her request, I gave the nosegay, consisting of 
red geranium, white stock, and other flowers, to 
Johann, telling him that he must select some of the 
red flowers to give to the lady. He instantly and 
accurately separated the geranium from the other 
flowers : " and now," I said, " you must add some 
of the white to your boquet." This he also did with 
equal readiness. 

Again, he told the letters, B. M, and O, which I 
wrote in a large printing hand on pieces of card and 
held before his closed lids. When led before the 
mirror, which was then in deep shade, being at the 
farther end of an apartment forty feet in length and 
lighted only by a single lamp, he, as usual, expressed 
his perception of " etwas hell und heiter " (something 
clear and bright) ; but, when brought close up to the 
lamp, he made no observation of the kind. Again I 
took him to a glass over the chimney-piece, on which 
the light of the lamp fell strongly, when he cried out, 
" viel licht, viel licht ! " (Much light, much light !) 
While the patient was still in the mesmeric state, tea 
was brought in. I ate some dry toast, while holding 
Johann's hand. He imitated the movements of mas- 



MESMERIC SLEEPWAKIXG. 259 

tication ; and on being asked what he tasted, replied, 
" Bread of some kind/' Upon this one of the party 
present, without speaking, gave me quickly a piece 
of sugar, signing me to substitute it for the toast. 
This I did. and the sound which I made in eating 
was not perceptibly changed, yet Johann instantly 
and spontaneously exclaimed, " I taste something 
sweet.' 3 

I here close the proofs which I have to ofler, that 
the perfect mesmeric sleepwaker does indeed possess 
a faculty of perception apart from the mere external 
mechanism of the senses. The means which I have 
been led to take, in order to convince myself of this 
fact, have, besides conducing to the end which 1 had 
in view, been productive of other results, which some 
persons maj deem more important to the welfare of 

humanity than any discovery of new mode- ot sensa- 
tion or of extraordinary developments of vision. I 

have established beyond a doubt, that the action of 

mesmerism is highly remedial in affections of that 

precious organ whereby we enjoy 

M Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. " 

Not only as regards Johann have I proved this, 

but also in the case of E. A . who. when I first 

began to mesmerise him. suffered so much from a 
weakness in his i yes thai he could neither see to read 
nor write by candlelight At first, indeed, before I 
became fully aware of the efficacy of mesmerism as 

a remedy, E. A , by my advice, occasionally used 

a lotion of rose-water for his eyes : but in sleepwak- 



260 MESMERIC SLEEPWAKING. 

ing he declared that mesmerism would cure him 
without the employment of any additional means. 
The lotion, therefore, was discontinued, almost in 
the beginning of the mesmeric treatment ; and, under 
the beneficial influence of mesmerism alone, the pa- 
tient not only recovered the healthy action of his 
sight, but, before he left me, attained to the enjoy- 
ment of a remarkable strength of vision. 

Again, I once mesmerised another boy, nearly 
blind, belonging to the same institution of which Jo- 
hann was a member. After about a quarter of an 
hour's mesmerisation, he fell into a profound sleep, 
which lasted for nearly four hours. Though the 
patient gave no other token of being mesmerically 
affected, his sleep was evidently the result of mes- 
meric action, for neither calling to him nor shaking 
him could dispel it ; and he walked without awaking 
from a chair to a sofa, where he remained till he 
awoke. This sleep was followed by an improvement 
in his powers of vision ; and, when I saw him at the 
institution some time afterwards, he told me that the 
benefit had been lasting, for that he then saw better 
than before I had mesmerised him, adding that he 
much wished I could be permitted to mesmerise him 
again. 

These are facts which can scarcely be regarded 
with indifference, even by those who will not see in 
mesmerism a promise that transcends this life and 
the purposes of our present organization. 



BOOK III. 



SECTION I. 

CONFORMITY OF MESMERI&M WITH OUR GENERAL EX- 
PERIENCE. 

Hating now described the state of mesmeric sleep- 
waking and its accompanying manifestations, I am 
desirous of elucidating it by such reasonings as may 
prepare the minds of men to receive this peculiar 
phasis of our nature as a confirmed fact; not as an 
insulated phenomenon: — ad a link in the eternal 
chain of things, not as an interruption to the universal 
order. With this end in view, it is necessary to in- 
quire under what conditions men believe that they 
comprehend any thing whatever ; and, this being 
ascertained, it is clear that we must endeavor to place 
under those conditions the object we'wish to explain, 
and to adapt our arguments thereupon to the dispo- 
sition of the listener's mind. Attaching something 
mysterious to tin 1 idea of causes in general, and to 
all that relates to the explanation of unusual circum- 
stances, we are too apt to forget that causes are them- 
selves but facts, and that to explain is only to make 
the unknown clear by a reference to that which we 
already know. But, if we rightly consider the springs 



262 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

whence arises our seeming comprehension of any 
subject, we shall find that they all reduce themselves 
to three very natural and intelligible sources, namely, 
traditional faith — personal experience — and an idea 
of adequate power. 

For, I ask, when is it that we rest contented with 
our knowledge of a fact ? 

Undeniably, then, 1st. When we have accepted it, 
as a received truth, from infancy. 

2dly. When we have felt it in our own persons. 

3dly. When we imagine that we can refer it to an 
adequate cause. 

For, as to the first condition of our belief, let us 
consider what a multitude of things we trust in merely 
because we have heard them from our nurse's lips, 
and though, these things should be mere errors, we 
still find that to tear them from the hold they have 
upon our minds is always difficult — often impossible. 
In such a case, we do not reason upon our notions ; 
— we do not strive to render them more clear ; — 
we are indifferent about mounting to their source ; — 
we rest in them with simple confidence. The very 
religion of many persons reposes upon such a basis, 
and this, relating as it does to our highest interests, 
may serve as an instance of the power of early asso- 
ciation and of the traditional credence upon which I 
am insisting. 

Secondly ; it is no less evident that we accept, on 
the testimony of our personal experience, whatever 
we find assimilated thereunto. No one dreams of 
doubting that other men may sleep, eat, walk, or 
write. The force of this principle may be gathered 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 263 

from the strength of its antagonist feeling. We have 
an actual repugnance to credit that which we have 
not felt ourselves. To give an example of this. 
There is a singular state of mind, which is known to 
some, and which has been adverted to by various 
poets, (as, for instance, Coleridge) — 

u Which makes the present, while the flash doth last, 
Seem but the semblance of an unknown past," 

when, according to Tennyson's more particular de- 
scription of this mental phenomenon, — 

" We ebb into a former life, or seem 
To lapse far back in a confused dream, 
To states of mystical similitude. 
If one but speaks, or hems, or stirs his chair, 
Ever the iroader mxeth more and more ; 
Bo that ire >ay — 4 All this hath been before ' — 
All this hath been, I know not when, or where." 

Now let any one, who has experienced this per- 
plexing reference to events which he seems to have 
rehearsed in some prior state of existence, speak of 
the feeling to another who is wholly ignorant of it. 
The latter will very likely exclaim, as a friend of 
mine to whom I described this mood of mind actu- 
ally did exclaim. — "Had I ever felt any thing like 
what you mention, 1 should think myself lit for Bed- 
lam." 

On the other hand. he. who knows the sensation 
and can sympathize with it, will listen to a similar 
statement without surprise, and will probably say — 
" I can well believe this, for I have felt it myself." 

A more common instance of this incredulity re- 



264 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

specting all that lies beyond our own experience, is 
our reluctance to believe that pains, which we have 
never known, can really be as acute as they are re- 
presented to us. u He jests at scars, who never felt 
a wound,' 5 and he, who has been always free from 
the toothach, will almost laugh at a friend under a 
paroxysm of that torment ; not because he is hard- 
hearted, but because he cannot conceive the matter 
deeply enough to be serious. 

There is an actual inherent propensity in human 
nature to make personal knowledge the measure of 
truth, so strong as to incline us to believe any thing 
that has reference even to our prior experience. I 
have read somewhere of an old woman whose son, 
returning from foreign parts, related fo her the won- 
ders he had seen. He spoke of flying fish, and of a 
burning mountain ; but the cautious mother cried 
out, " No, no, Jack ! I know what traveler's tales 
are ! That I'll never believe ! " At last, after many 
similar truths rejected, the sailor, in despair, hatched 
a lie, and said, " In Jamaica I saw sugar growing on 
trees, and rivers of rum." " Ay, ay, child," ex- 
claimed the beldam, " Now you speak sense. That 
I'll well believe, for I know that rum and sugar come 
from Jamaica ! " Now, in mesmerism, it is just thus. 
There is much rejected that accords not with the 
previous experience of persons, yet perhaps every one 
has his rum and sugar reservation — some greater 
marvel than those which he refuses to credit. After 
all, it is not the marvellousness of mesmerism that 
shocks ; it is only its discrepancy with each individ- 
ual's experience or figment of the brain. 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 265 

In the third place, we need reflect but little in 
order to perceive that we rest contented with our 
knowledge of events so long as the idea of an 
adequate cause for them is present to our minds. 
Yet this tendency of our nature to refer events not 
only to a cause, but to an adequate cause, has not 
been sufficiently distinguished from the simple pro- 
pensity (also inherent in our intellectual structure), 
which inclines us. when we see an effect with which 
we are familiar, to suppose that its usual antecedent 
either is, or has been, also, present ; for we are not 
only inclined to take things in connection, and to view 
the relationship between them, but likewise to account 
for the phenomena we behold by tracing them to 
their primary and efficient impulses. When we fail 
to ascribe an event to an adequate agency, wfe art 
troubled and discontented, and a restless idea of the 
supernatural (here truest) haunts and agitates us: on 
the other hand, whenever we deem that we can assign 
a sufficient cause to an appearance, however startling 
and unusual, we are satisfied, and seek to know no 
further. For this reason, they, who are in the habit 
of overlooking all the intermediate processes of nature, 
and w r ho resolve every thing at once into the power 
of God, enjoy a pleasure distinct from the merely 
pious one of attributing every thing to one beneficent 
Creator. They rest in a sufficient cause ; they are 
tormented by no importunate questionings of spirit ; 
their answer to every enigma of the universe is ever 
ready. They who are not of this happy, but (it may 
be suspected) indolent frame of mind, and who, at the 
same time, have not knowledge sufficient to ascend, 
23 



266 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

surely and gradually, the steps of nature's temple, 
are actually forced into an irregular flight upwards, 
and, rather than ascribe perplexing appearances to an 
inadequate cause, will attribute them to an unknown 
and mysterious one (the inadequacy of which cannot 
be put to the proof at least), to some cloud-born 
agency, which flatters their imagination with a sense 
of power. Hence, where gross ignorance prevails, 
superstition, with all its notions of demoniac influences, 
takes its rise ; hence, in darker ages, the learned have 
been deemed wizards, and the man of science has 
been supposed to have signed a contract with Satan. 
Hence, even in our own day, some, whose minds are 
in arrear with time, will attribute the whole of mes- 
meric agencies to the machinations of the evil one, 
being unaware how much they are influenced in their 
judgment by the propensity we all have to cut a knot 
when we cannot untie it. But, after all, the fondness 
of some persons for diabolic agency is not a little 
surprising and unaccountable. For my own part I 
had always rather rest in God than in the devil. 
Observe we, too, that many a person will deem him- 
self vastly enlightened by a fine word, and that hence 
knowledge is too often turned into a few high-sounding 
phrases. Wherefore is this ? A pompous term may 
stand as the representative of an efficient force ; and, 
in the case where the event to be accounted for ap- 
pears very wondrous, the alleged cause always pleases 
the ignorant better, the more incomprehensibly it is 
expressed. But, where phenomena come, or seem to 
come, nearer the level of our experience, then we are 
apt to explain them by some familiar force, which, 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 267 

however, may have as little to do with them as any 
cause with which we are entirely unacquainted. This, 
however, is hard to be perceived, for. whatever we 
know and have proved to be capable of effecting some- 
thing, we are inclined to exalt into a power and to 
force into offices alien to its sphere of operation. For 
instance, every man has felt that the frequent repeti- 
tion of any action increases the tendency to it. This 
phenomenon of our nature we personify under the 
name of Habit, and recognise the potency of its influ- 
ence, binding us, as the Lilliputians did Gulliver, 
not by the individual strength, but by the number, of 
ils subtle bands. Again, when one part of our bodies 

i> deranged, another often partakes in the affection, 
or. ;i- we express it, suffers bj sympathy. Sympathy, 

then, must be accounted as a power, explanatory of 
man] mysteries of our being; so must association — 
so must imitation, and a host of other shadowy im- 
personations, which are but names for certain mental 
or bodily States. To words like these, when hard 
pushed for nn explanation of any thing, we can resort 
with much complacency; not that, after having done 
so, we understand the 4 matter one whit better than 
before 1 , but we have referred it to a principle with 
which we are in part acquainted, and which, deeming 
it the efficient cause of some things, we suppose may 
also produce the one in question. 

These strivings after adequate causation I consider 
to be the upward and inevitable tendency of mind to 
its sources of reason, teaching us by internal admo- 
nitions that all phenomena whatever emanate from 
thought ; but, as I shall have occasion hereafter to 



263 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

make some remarks on power, and whence our notion 
of it is derived, I will, at present, advance no deeper 
into this subject, having, I trust, said enough to show 
that we rest satisfied with our knowledge of events in 
proportion as we think that we can refer them to an 
adequate cause ; and that consequently the surest 
means to obtain general credence for any fact is to 
exhibit it in connection with a cause which shall at 
once be perceived adequate to its production. 

Applying the above reflections to mesmerism and 
its phenomena, we cannot but perceive that of the 
three great sources of human conviction which we 
have been considering, — namely, traditional faith, 
personal experience, and adequate agency, — there is 
not one which has been called into play in a manner 
favorable to our subject. 

Whatever may be the case on the Continent, it will 
be admitted that in England the present generation 
have been educated in a profound contempt and dis- 
belief of mesmerism. Thus from traditional faith it 
receives no support, but the contrary ; for the lessons 
of our childhood have raised a barrier between it and 
us, the strength of which no one can have felt more 
forcibly than myself. 

From personal experience mesmerism is not less 
removed ; and it must be confessed that writers on 
the subject, in general, have not contributed to bring 
it nearer to the home-felt conviction of mankind. 
Too often have they endeavored to illustrate it by a 
reference to marvels as far distant from personal ex- 
perience as itself. In its behalf, ancient chronicles 
have been ransacked ; classical authorities have been 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 269 

marshalled in formidable array ; the tomb has given 
up its vampires, and Egyptian mysteries have been 
dragged to light, — for what purpose ? Mesmerism 
is not at all rendered more credible by being bol- 
stered up by histories which themselves are doubtful ; 
nor is it explained (ignotwn per ignotius) by means 
of phenomena that surpass human comprehension. 

In the third place, it appears tome that mesmerism 
has not been viewed in connection with an adequate 
cause, since, as I have elsewhere observed, men of 
science would refer it, with all its intellectual pheno- 
mena, to a simply physical agency ; while men of 
imagination would force even its physical affections 
into the domain of pare spiritualism. 

It should then be the object of a writer on mes- 
merism to supply his subject with those advantages 
of which concurring circumstances have tended to 
deprive it. Others, 1 feel confident, will effect far 
more than I can in this cause ; yet I trust I shall 
not be deemed presumptuous in bringing forward 
some considerations which have offered themselves 
to my mind, tending to approximate at least the new 
condition of man to those grounds of credibility on 
which I have shown our quiet possession of truths 
in general to repose. 

Of the three claims to confidence, wherein mes- 
merism is deficient, the hardest to supply is undoubt- 
edly that of early association. Vet even here it may 
be urged that we have all. from childhood, supposed 
natural sleepwaking to be an undoubted phenomenon 
of man's constitution. There are many, perhaps, 
who remember to have heard tell of some sleepwalker, 

S3* 



270 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

whose feats have been the wonder of their native 
village, who has been known to rise from his bed, 
and to display, in slumber, even more than his ordi- 
nary activity, crossing, it may be, some perilous ford, 
or balancing himself on the edge of a precipice, where 
the waking eye would sicken and the conscious brain 
would reel. Who does not believe in the existence 
of such a state ? Doctors have descanted upon it 
with the precision of medical lore ; metaphysicians 
have examined it as a curious feature of humanity ; 
and the light and gay, regarding it as a mere matter 
of amusement, have flocked to see its mimicry in 
dramatic representation, enhanced by all the charms 
of music and the fascinations of genius. Nay, in the 
higher departments of scenic art, it has illustrated 
one of the sublimest creations of the poetic mind : — r 
I allude, of course, to the tragedy of Macbeth, in 
which Shakspeare, who painted every shade and va- 
riety of our nature, has not left untouched this its 
most peculiar and interesting development. In brief, 
it is one of the truths which cannot be torn from the 
texture of our minds, or erased from the book and 
volume of the brain. 

This being the case, is there any good reason why 
we should exclude from our belief so similar a state 
of man as is mesmeric sleepwaking ; — or, rather, is 
not our conduct, on this occasion, the most striking 
proof of the really inefficient grounds on which the 
greater part of mankind believe or disbelieve any 
thing? How greatly we are inconsistent with our- 
selves ! We hear, without one feeling of doubt, tales 
of sleepwaking, quite as wonderful as the following 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 271 

account of Lady Macbeth' s sleepwaking : — "I have 
seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown 
upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, 
write upon it, read it, afterwards seal it, and again 
return to bed ; — yet, all this while, in a most fast 
sleep ;" — but, should the very same things be stated 
respecting a person under mesmerism, the name seems 
suddenly to make all the difference : we no longer 
believe ; we cry out that it is all an imposture ; — 
our whole being is in a state of hostility and agita- 
tion. Is this wise ? Is this in accord with human 
dignity of thought ? I would more particularly ask 
medical men whether they have not been accustomed 
to regard as true not only certain phenomena of nat- 
ural sleepwaking, to the full afl wonderful as any 
which mesmerism presents, but also of catalepsy — 
a state under which the most extraordinary develop- 
ments of nervous sensibility may take place ; and I 
would then nige them to examine well the real causes 
of their denying in one case what they accede to in 
another. Also I would inquire, with what patience 
they who have attended, in a medical capacity, many 
an unfortunate wretch dying of hydrophobia, can 
listen to the prabble of a man who contends that hu- 
man nature is liable to no such affliction, merely be- 
cause he has heard from childhood the fact spoken of 
as doubtful ? If no good answer can be given to these 
questions, surely a reasonable being may suspect that 
there is some great error at the root of all these dis- 
crepancies and contradictions in feeling and belief; 
and it may be contended that, if we accept traditional 
faith as the ground of our confidence in certain par- 



272 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

ticulars, we must retain it still as corroborative of the 
same particulars, whatever change in their nomencla- 
ture may occur. 

In truth, when we demand acceptance for many 
of the phenomena of mesmerism, we only require a 
sacrifice of men's prejudices, and not a dereliction 
from their ancient principles of belief. 

The mention of natural sleepwaking leads us al- 
most insensibly into realms that border closely upon 
those of personal experience. There are few of us 
probably who have not, in early years, had some 
touch of this malady, so incident to childhood, or, at 
least, so far beheld its effects in a brother, sister, or 
young relative, as to be convinced that persons may, 
being all the time asleep, perform many of the actions 
of their waking hours, and answer short questions, 
either rationally or with a certain ingenuity. Many 
also have perhaps had the opportunity of hearing 
stories relative to sleepwaking from the lips of the 
parties actually concerned in them. At least, I can 
affirm that, in the course of my own experience, I 
have met with several persons, who have either been 
sleepwakers themselves, or have been eye-witnesses of 
sleepwaking in others. On such individual testi- 
mony, I present to my reader the following narra- 
tions, which show at once the connection and the 
difference between natural and mesmeric sleepwak- 
ing. 

Mr. Matthieu, President of the Academy of Paint- 
ing at Louvain, told me that, not many years since, 
having an essay to write for what the French call a 
concours, he was in an anxious state of mind. His 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 273 

thoughts did not flow readily, and, after many efforts 
at composition, he could not produce any thing to 
please himself. What was his astonishment, one 
morning, to find upon his table, in his own hand- 
writing, the beginning of an excellent dissertation 
upon the subject which had lately occupied him ! 
He could not doubt that this was the work of his 
sleeping hours ; — but, curious to ascertain how far 
his mind would proceed with its train of thought 
under the same conditions which had originated it, 
he left the manuscript untouched, until he could in- 
spect it again after the interval of another night. 
The result of the experiment showed that he had 
resinned the pen in sleep, and had continued his 
composition in a perfectly connected manner. 

Another gentleman, Mr. Z of Neufchatel, re- 
lated to me the following instances of his own sleep- 
waking. When be was about seventeen, his father 
being dead, the management of an extensive mercan- 
tile establishment principally devolved upon himself. 
One day he had transacted a great deal of business, 
and still there were certain invoices to be written 
before the departure of some merchandize early on 
the following morning. Worn out with fatigue, he 
went to bed, having given orders to be called in time 
to supply the deficient inventories. At day-break, 
according to his directions, he was awakened by a 
servant, and went immediately to his mother (who 
generally assisted him in his labors), informing her that 
he was ready to begin the invoices. " What can you 
mean ? " she exclaimed ; " do not you know that you 
wrote them last night? and here they are!" — At 



274 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

the same time she placed in his hand the papers pro- 
perly executed, and in his own handwriting. On 

inquiry it appeared that Mr. Z , half an hour 

after he had retired to his room on the preceding 
evening, had returned, dressed as usual, to his 
mother's apartment, where he sat down before a 
writing-table and completed the documents in ques- 
tion ; Madam Z nothing doubting of his being 

awake at the time, though, on subsequent reflection, 
she remembered to have observed something fixed 
and strange about his eyes (they were open during his 
sleepwaking), — an appearance which she had attri- 
buted to her son's fatigue and want of sleep. 

On another occasion — not more than a few months 

ago — Mr. Z formed, over-night, an engagement 

to cross the mountains with a party of friends, who 
were to call for him early in the morning. This 
arrangement gave rise to the following curious cir- 
cumstances, which subsequently were made evident 
by collating the different particulars of the case. It 

happened that, on the same night, when Mr. Z 

was fast asleep in bed, a party of young men, stran- 
gers to him, stopped under his window accidentally, 
and, being not very sober, laughed and talked loudly 
for some time. The noise influencing the sleepwaker, 
gave him the idea that his friends were come to call 
him. Under this impression he arose, threw open 
his window, and addressed the party in familiar terms. 
The young men, being in an irritable and touchy 
state, replied to him in no agreeable manner, until a 
quarrel arose between the sleeping man and the 
group below, who were in no better possession of 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 275 

their mouses than himself. The tumult was only 
appeased by the watchman dispersing the rioters, and 
counselling the sleepwaker (not suspected to be such) 

to return to bed. The next day Mr. Z retained 

no recollection whatever of the events of the night, 
and made, as agreed upon, the expedition with his 
friends. On his return, however, to Neufchatel, two 
of the gay party, who had been under his window, 
waited on him. and. to his ufter astonishment, begged 
him to explain why he had called to them, and, in a 
manner, insulted them, on such a night. " How 
could I insult you, when I never saw you before ? " 

was Mr. Z 's exclamation ; and great was the 

perplexity of both the parties, until Mr. Z , re- 
membering his addiction to sleepwaking. suggested 
an explanation, which every circumstance tended to 
confirm, 

Mr. M , also of Neufchatel, has a brother, 

who is subject to sleepwaking. The following is an 
amusing specimen of his exploits in that way. Mr. 

M was on a journey with him, and one night, 

when they occupied the same apartment, the sleep- 
waker awoke the former by loud and earnest talking. 

There was a light in the room, and Mr. M (as 

he told me) could see his brother standing upright 
on the edge of his bed, occasionally leaning forward 
and peering over (though his eyes were shut) with 
the expression of a man who earnestly gazes after 
something. " What is the matter with you, John ? " 

asked Mr. M . " Oh," replied John, " take care 

of your steps, for Heaven's sake ! Do not you see 
that we are just on the brink of a horrible precipice ? " 



276 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

" Not at all," rejoined Mr. M ; " you are under 

a delusion, and I pray you to calm yourself!" — 
" What ! " said the sleepwaker, " you say there is 
no precipice ? I '11 throw a great stone down to 
prove it to you. — There!" he cried, snatching off 
his night-cap, and flinging it on the floor, — " there 
it goes ! — and what an awful depth the precipice 
must be, for the stone makes no noise ! " 

Such facts as the abftve will perhaps be credited 
— just because they are not headed " Mesmerism." 
They are at least sufficient to show that many of the 
features of mesmeric sleepwaking have precedents 
which are to be met with in acknowledged pheno- 
mena common to man. These, however, rest rather 
on personal evidence than on personal experience. 
The sleepwaker, when once awake, does not remem- 
ber the occurrences or the sensations of his sleep- 
waking, and the spectator who bears testimony to his 
actions is a stranger to their inward sources. 

I would, however, give mesmerism a stronger hold 
upon human conviction than can be supplied by any 
external proof. I would introduce it into the very 
bosom and private feelings of each individual, by 
showing that parts of it, so far from being removed 
from our daily life, are altogether familiar to us, 
though under another guise and bearing other names. 

I would prove this — 1st. As regards the produc- 
tion of the mesmeric state. 2dly. As regards the 
state itself. 

First, then, let us inquire — Are the means by 
which the mesmeric slumber is produced in any way 
approximated to our experience ? 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 277 

The subsidiary agents, which have been found 
most efficacious in aiding one person to influence 
another in the manner called mesmeric, are the eye 
and the hand. 

Now, I would ask, who is there that has not felt 
the influence of the human eye — that window of 
the soul ? What is there which equally with itself 
arrests attention, fascinates, fixes, calms, and sub- 
dues ? Anger is quelled before its steady gaze ; even 
madness becomes docile beneath its dominion. The 
late Dr. Willis used to say that by the eye chiefly he 
controlled his most refractory patients. Acting at 
once physically and morally, it seems to affect the 
nervous system in a real and peculiar manner; for 
brutes, which cannot be supposed to be misled by 
imagination] arc extremely sensible to the influence 
of the human eye. Nay. even to certain of the brute 
creation a remarkable power of eye seems to belong. 
To say nothing of some doubtful stories respecting 
the fascination which serpents exercise over weaker 
creatures, I have seen a bird fluttering before a cat, 
as if held and bound by her watchful gaze, and so 
almost constrained to offer itself a voluntary sacrifice 
to its enemy. 

When we consider these things we can scarcely 
marvel that pow r ers even magical have been attrib- 
uted, by ignorance and superstition, to the wonderful 
organ of which we are speaking ; nor that diseases, 
and even death, should have been supposed, in some 
cases, to have originated in the stroke of an evil 
eye. 

Now, be it remembered, that the doctrine of mes- 
24 



278 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

merism is that the mesmeriser's force should become 
predominant over that of his patient ; and mesmeric 
phenomena do really show, as I have formerly de- 
monstrated, that the mesmeriser's will sways the 
patient's volition in a very peculiar manner. The 
relation between the mesmeriser and the patient is 
that of activity to passivity. The one is to guide, 
direct, and influence ; the other is to receive, and to 
be influenced. The first process, then, of mesmerism 
may be called a strife between the two forces of 
mesmeriser and patient. There is a will to be sub- 
dued, and a body to be brought into subjection ; yet 
this is to be accomplished in all the tranquillity of a 
religious silence. What instrument is adequate to 
such an effect ? Surely we should at once name the 
eye as the great agent in this strife. By a sort of 
natural instinct, we do use it, where we wish to pre- 
vail. The meanest, striving with another, will call 
the first blenching of his adversary's gaze, — victory. 
Men of energetic characters and calculated for do- 
minion have always been remarkable for the potency 
of their glances, and have been celebrated as not 
only " Lord of the lion port," but also of " the eagle 
eye." Few could endure the searching gaze of Na- 
poleon. The rulers of the domain of intellect have 
been as famous as the kings of the earth for a keen 
regard. The glance of Dr. Johnson from under 
shaggy brows availed no less than the eloquence of 
the sage's tongue. I remember that Dr. Parr, who 
was a sort of Johnson in his way, was very proud 
of his own visual prowess, and I once heard him 
boast that his eye had saved the nation. 






WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 279 

Pitt, he declared, was about to bring forward some 
disastrous measure, when he, having previous know- 
ledge of the statesman's evil intentions, repaired to 
the House of Commons. " I fixed, sir," said he, 
" my eye upon Pitt. I gave him one of my looks 
(every body knows my looks,) and he could not utter 
a word, sir. He rose, stammered, and sat down 
again, — and there I kept him off his legs till Fox 
had taken possession of the ear of the house ; and so 
the measure, when brought forward, was nugatory. 
Yes, yes, I think I may say that my eye saved the 
nation." 

In fact, we perceive that Dr. Parr mesmerised Pitt. 
But, jesting apart, I need only refer to my reader's 
own feelings for a testimony to the all but miracu- 
lous powers of the human eve. It seems to be life 
and will made visible ; and, when life is fled, wo 
may exclaim with the poet — 

u Oh, o'er the eye Death most exerts his might, 
And hurls the spirit from her throne of light." 

If the eye be powerful to influence and to subdue, 
the human hand is not less remarkable for its sooth- 
ing properties. We naturally apply our hands to any 
part of our bodies in which we feel pain, and how 
often are we sensible of a mitigation in our suffer- 
ings ! The mother soothes her child to sleep by the 
application of her hand, and calms it into patience, 
when it has received an injury, by her gentle touches. 
A lady, on whose word I can rely, told me that, 
during a heavy malady, she could gain no sleep 
except when holding her husband's hand, and that 



280 



CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 



the moment he withdrew it, however gently, she 
awoke. Similar phenomena, if oftener attended to, 
might doubtless press upon our remembrance and 
justify mesmerism by the analogies of common life. 
Touching for the toothach is a sort of charm that is 
often resorted to by the vulgar with success ; and 
in Constantinople, I have been informed, there are 
men who actually make it their business to cure 
toothach in this manner. Once it was supposed that 
a certain insect, being crushed and held to a painful 
tooth, acted as an anodyne, and learned papers were 
accordingly written on the virtues of this particular 
remedy. Unfortunately, however, it was soon dis- 
covered that the finger which applied the insect was 
the real depository of the soothing virtue ; for the 
desired effect took place just as well without the 
insect as with it. 

A travelled friend of mine tells me that he has 
seen a sort of mesmerism exercised by the dancing 
Dervises of the East upon each other. After whirl- 
ing round in their mystic and exciting dance, they 
are apt to fall to the ground in strong convulsions. 
On such occasions, one of the calmer brethren comes 
up to the extatic patient, and, by gentle touches of 
the hand, invariably succeeds in soothing him to 
repose. 

That the hand should be an agent in dispensing 
the human or the mesmeric influence can hardly 
seem wonderful to those who consider how much the 
hand is identified with, and distinctive of, man. 
Considering the perfection of its form, aud the dis- 
criminative delicacy of its touch, we can almost 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 281 

pardon those who have gone so far as to affirm that 
the hand alone is the efficient cause of our suprema- 
cy over the brute creation. The tactile nerves, with 
which it is so abundantly supplied, seem peculiarly 
to adapt it to the task of transmitting an influence, 
which, in some mysterious way, yet manifestly, 
seems to be connected with the nervous and vital 
forces. In some old systems of physiology each 
part of the body had its separate spirits : there 
were the spirits of the knees, the spirits of the feet, 
dec. Could we adopt so fanciful a notion, w r e should 
say that the spirits of the hand are particularly 
potent. After the eye. the fingers seem to enjoy a 
fuller share of the sentient and motory power than 
any other pari of the body. Seldom are they at 

rest — seldom are their functions suspended. The 
marvels of the painters', sculptors 9 , musicians 3 skill 
depend upon their agency. Apart from their re- 
cording powers, the headwork of the poet and phi- 
losopher would be vain: to them belong all the 
triumphs of architecture, all the splendid results of 
industry ; in fine, all the success of all the ingenuity 
of man. Their free and constant exercise seems 
more than any thing to betoken life : the baby's 
clutched hand is a type of its unfolded being. The 
purposeless action of the same organ is a presage of 
death: "After I saw him fumble with the sheets," 
says Hostess Quickly, " and play with flowers, and 
smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but 
one way." 

Shall the general feeling of mankind be in vain 
appealed to ? If that be true which Shakspeare has 
24* 



282 CONFORMITY OF MESMERISM 

affirmed — " One touch of nature makes the whole 
world kin/ 5 — the influence of the human hand must 
be universally acknowledged. It has a language of 
its own ; it can appeal from man to man ; it can 
bless, and it can curse : the most ancient belief con- 
nects it with authority and power. The holding 
up of Moses's hands gave victory to the Israelites. 
" And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, 
that Israel prevailed ; and, when he let down his 
hand, Amalek prevailed." ] 

Gifts of healing, not less than of power, belong to 
the hand by prescriptive right. If the potency of the 
royal touch in curing the king's evil be but a super- 
stition, let us remember that it took its origin from a 
holy source : Christ and his disciples laid their hands 
upon the sick, and they were healed. The miracles 
of our Lord were remarkably accompanied by actions 
of the hand 2 , as if they were in some manner con- 
nected with that external means. In restoring sight 
and hearing, lie touched the ears and eyes of the 
afflicted persons. Even the imparting of the gift of 
the Holy Spirit followed the imposition of hands ; 
and this external ensign of a spiritual agency is still 
retained in our church. Who that has undergone or 
witnessed the beautiful rite of confirmation but has 
felt its power ? 

The eye and the hand, then, appear to be fitting 
instruments in transmitting a potential and remedial 
agency. 

If we seek for such a general instance of the in- 

1 Exod. xvii. 11. 

2 See Matt. viii. 15 ; Mark vii. 33, and viii. 95. 



WITH OUR GENERAL EXPERIENCE. 283 

fluence of one human being on another as may seem 
like that mutual loss and gain and interchange of 
vital force which is the principal wonder in mesmer- 
ism, we have only to look at the effects produced 
when young persons sleep with old. Since the days 
of King David 1 , it has been known that the latter 
are strengthened at the expense of the former. Some 
painful instances of this have fallen under my own 
observation : one, in which the future well-being 
of a person very dear to me was compromised ; and I 
was acquainted with an infirm old lady, who was so 
aware of the benefit that she derived from sleeping 
with young persons, that, with a sort of horrid vam- 
pirism, she always obliged her maid to share her bed: 
thus successively destroying the health of several 
attendants.-' 

Even amongst animals it has been found that the 
young cannot be too closely associated with the old 
without suffering detriment. JToung horses, standing 
in a stable beside old ones, become less healthy. 

1 1 Kings, ch. i. 

2 The celebrated German physiologist, Ilufeland, has remarked 
the longevity of school masters, and attributes it to their living so 
constantly amidst the healthy emanations of young persons. 



284 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS, 



SECTION II. 

ON THE MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

I now proceed to assimilate the state of mesmeric 
sleepwaking itself to our intimate personal convic- 
tions, striving to demonstrate that all its phases and 
phenomena are only intense degrees of known and 
even ordinary conditions of man. I would render it 
not only comprehensible, but familiar — not under- 
stood merely, but also felt. 

I have elsewhere remarked that there are, in the 
mesmeric state, peculiarities of consciousness, of which 
I postponed the consideration until I could adduce 
them as explanatory of mesmeric sleepwaking. To 
this portion of my subject I now turn my attention. 
But, before proceeding to demonstrate that the pecu- 
liar conditions of mesmeric consciousness arise from 
novelty of combination — not of principle, it is ab- 
solutely essential that I should fix in what sense I 
use the word consciousness, — a precaution the more 
necessary on account of the different significations 
which have been attached to it by various metaphy- 
sicians ; some making it a distinct faculty of the soul, 
others a necessary accompaniment of every mental 
operation and in no way to be distinguished from 
the operation itself. 

Examining, however, whence springs this diversity 
of notion respecting consciousness, we find that all 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 285 

the confusion has arisen from this — Consciousness 
is susceptible of various developments, which have 
never been properly distinguished into their several 
grades ; one person applying the generic term in 
question to one only of its specific degrees ; another 
equally restricting it to a different class of its opera- 
tions. Dr. Thomas Brown, indeed, has some ad- 
mirable remarks upon the subject, and has well dis- 
tinguished between the simple consciousness of the 
moment and remembered consciousness. But he 
has omitted to observe that there is again a difference 
between these two actions of consciousness and a 
third — namely, reflective consciousness, or internal 
observation. It is true that he once casually observes, 
" consciousiK gs is only another Dame for internal ob- 
servation ;" but herein I conceive him to speak with 
less than his usual accuracy ; for consciousness is not 
another name for internal observation, but internal 
observation is our of the operations of consciousness, 
which, as not identical with its parent, should not 
be involved with it in one common definition. Sim- 
ply to feel, or simply to pass again through a suc- 
cession of former feelings with a sense of their rela- 
tion to one personal identity, is not the same as to 
be self-regardant and watchful of our own sensa- 
tions as they arise Under the last circumstances 
the mind is manifestly in another state and tone of 
feeling. Besides, nothing can be clearer than that 
the mind may act without internal observation, while 
without simple consciousness it cannot act ; since, as 
Dr. Brown himself logically observes, u The con- 
sciousness which we have of our transient thoughts 



286 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

or sensations is nothing more than the thoughts or 
sensations themselves, which could not be thoughts 
or sensations if they were not felt." But Dr. Brown 
errs as much, perhaps, from simplicity, as others 
from multiplicity, of system. Nothing, indeed, can 
be more admirable than his view of the mind — not 
as a bundle of faculties, but as a unity, capable of 
passing into various consecutive states. But had 
not this great philosopher been as anxious to reduce 
all mental phenomena whatever to suggestion, as 
Locke was to compress the w r orld of intellect into the 
two faculties of sensation and reflection, I think he 
would have admitted distinctions which his theory 
caused him to overlook. Nature, however, will not 
thus be restricted. She is simple, but her effects are 
manifold ; and the very necessities of our language 
demand as distinctive a reference to her various 
operations, as if the differences were actual, and of 
kind, instead of degree. Goethe, in his Morphology 
of Plants, has beautifully shown that all their various 
parts are but developments of one original principle ; 
yet what confusion in botany would arise were some 
naturalists to apply the generic word plant to the 
leaves, others to the blossoms, of a vegetable ! Yet 
an absurdity as great as this is committed when we 
apply the generic term consciousness indiscriminately 
to all the different manifestations, degrees, and varie- 
ties of that action of intelligence. The safer plan 
is to mark difference, where difference can be dis- 
cerned, and to give distinct names to distinct devel- 
opments, whether of matter or of mind. In doing 
this, however, we have to guard against unnecessary 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 287 

multiplication,, and we should never omit to trace 
the original source amidst the mazes of its various 
channels. Simplicity of principle — variety of de- 
velopment, — these are the points to be kept in view. 
Thus, while we admit sensation, perception, atten- 
tion, reflection, to be excellent terms to express cer- 
tain acts of the mind, we must not forget that these 
so-called faculties are but different forms and manifes- 
tations of consciousness. A little consideration will 
show that they are truly so. 

A sensation of which the mind is not conscious is 
no sensation at all ; neither can we feel without per- 
ceiving, nor perceive without, in some degree, attend- 
ing to that which we perceive. When we say that 
we attend to a thing, which before we barely per- 
ceived, it is not that consciousness, perception, and 
attention are going on together, but that conscious- 
ness has advanced through the Stage of perception 
into that of attention, — attention only expressing a 
higher degree of consciousness, while reflection, again, 
indicates a different operation of the same. This 
last is attention directed towards ourselves, instead 
of external things ; but the principle is unchanged. 
A reflection is just as much the consciousness of the 
moment as is a simple sensation. 

If it be asked, then, in what sense I use the term 
consciousness, I answer, as a general expression for 
every act and state of the mind. I do not say with 
Reid that it is " an operation of the understanding'' 
(though I do grant him that it cannot be " logically 
defined " — for how can we define existence ?), but I 
affirm that it is the operation, not of the under- 



288 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

standing only, but of the whole man. To explain 
myself still further, I conceive that consciousness 
stands in the same relation to the mind that physical 
force does to the body. As the least of our motions 
implies a degree of the latter, so does the most 
trifling mental change infer a degree of the former. 
Let it be remembered, however, that consciousness, 
like physical force, has no real existence out of the 
subject that manifests it. Nevertheless, for purposes 
of analysis, we must not only speak of it separately, 
but distinguish its various intensity of action. In 
order to do this, yet as much as possible preserve an 
unbroken unity, I conceive that the best nomen- 
clature for the varieties of consciousness would be 
one that should ever recall the primary quality, yet 
distinguish, by means of epithets, its various mani- 
festations. Omitting its minor developments, I pro- 
pose, therefore, to classify thus the operations of the 
agency in question : — 

Simple consciousness, — that is to say. the mind's 
action in those absent and dreamy moods, when 
much thought is accompanied by no reflection, and 
is succeeded by no memory of the subjects of its 
meditation. 

Retrospective consciousness, — the mind's action, 
when it passes through a series of former thoughts 
and sensations, without making them objects of 
scrutiny. 

Introspective consciousness, — the mind's action, 
when self-regardant. It is distinguished from mere 
memory in two marked particulars. It immediately 
succeeds the thought, on which it casts a reflective 






MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 289 

glance, and it has ourselves for its object. It is a 
state in which thought, and observation of thought, 
succeed each other so rapidly, and with such even 
alternation, as to seem identical. 

But the end which I have in view compels me still 
further to observe that the mind has a physical as 
well as intellectual sensibility, and takes cognizance 
of the motions and sensual conditions of the body to 
which it is attached. Its observation of these seems 
to constitute a consciousness apart. The proof may 
be drawn from our simplest actions. When walking 
and thinking on various subjects, we never cease for 
a moment to direct our limbs properly, yet never 
once interrupt our train of thought, unless some 
unusual circumstance should call upon us for an 
Unusual attention to our manner of progressing. 
Now allowing, a< axiomatic, that bodily motions (the 
vital and involuntary of course excepted) spring from 
the mind, and that, cause ceasing, effect also ceases, 
ire must perceive thai to every act of the body an act 
of the mind is requisite; Of how many acts of the 
mind, then, is walking composed! consequently of 
how many simple consciousnesses! But other con- 
sciousnesses have been shown progressing identically 
with these. While occupied in walking, we pre- 
served a chain of intellectual thought as consistent 
and as unbroken as the physical one whereby our 
external actions were directed. 

This is a phenomenon of our nature, in the con- 
sideration of which we may indeed cast out 

" Philosophy's deep sea-line, but to find 
Truth's ocean fathomless." 
25 



290 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

But, while we confess it to be a mystery, we should 
also value it as a blessing; for, were we forced ever 
to attend to those motions, which may now be called 
automatic, we should scarcely have leisure for any 
other mental process. If the mind that now guides 
the pen wherewith these lines are traced were occu- 
pied in the mere act of writing, what would become 
of the thoughts which it desires to record and to 
transmit to others ? 

That the physical consciousness is capable, like 
the intellectual, of a triple development, is also 
manifest. 

It has its simple action ; as when each motion of 
our bodies is carelessly performed, and cannot be 
remembered so as to be exactly repeated. 

It has its retrospective action ; as when we re- 
member and repeat, yet do not observe our motion 
(in the case of playing an air from memory, for ex- 
ample, while we are thinking of something else). 
And, 

It has its introspective action ; as when we attend 
to our footsteps, in descending, with precaution, a 
snow-covered and slippery hill. 

It would be easy to show the various states pro- 
duced by the mixture of these elements in various 
proportions, tracing the degrees from the constant 
self-scrutiny, both mental and physical, that some 
persons carry on in society, when they observe their 
every least word, fearful to utter aught amiss, and 
their own least gesture, lest they should commit an 
awkwardness, to the unmixed and simple conscious- 
ness of reverie. But this would lead me too far from 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 291 

my present purpose. The two states above men- 
tioned may be taken as the extreme points of con- 
sciousness, while its medium condition may be found 
in our usual and habitual modes of conduct, when 
we are sufficiently attentive to our motions, not to 
knock our heads against a wall, and to our thoughts, 
as to be sure we are thinking. 

Regarding these states according to their value, 
we find that in none of them would man ever be 
capable of much intellectual exertion. In the first, 
the attention is too generally diffused, in its opposite 
too restricted, in the medium too alternating. Would 
we find man's distinguishing stamp of mental supe- 
riority, we must seek it in a fourth state — namely, 
that of abstraction, in which the pure intellectuality 
reigns nearly alone, and almost free from any dis- 
turbance of the introspective consciousness, which, 
being of itself an act, annihilates, pro tempore, all 

Other acts. Were we perpetually to exercise the re- 
flex act of the mind, and to pause upon our thoughts 
with Belf-observation, our train of ideas would halt, 
and fall to pieces for want of connection. 

But this is not all. Any admixture of the intro- 
spective consciousness detracts from the perfection 
of once-acquired and habitual motions, as much as 
it spoils the freedom and hold expansion of our 
thoughts. Of this we may soon convince ourselves. 
Though generally insensible to the act of breathing, 
we may, by attention, become aware of the process. 
What follows ? An immediate sense of uneasiness, 
and an interruption of that regular motion which 
seems to go on so well by itself. Again, that wink- 



292 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

*> 

ing of the eye, whereby the organ is healthily pre- 
served, becomes a torment, if we think about it. If 
these instances be objected to by persons who would 
confound the above motions with such as are vital 
and involuntary, I may appeal to a known phenome- 
non, which regards the voluntary motion of our fin- 
gers. Every musician must have felt that, when he 
has learnt to play a piece of music by heart, if he 
thinks upon the direction of his fingers, he is apt to 
play false. Let him trust to the simply memorial 
consciousness of his physical being, and he does not 
err. I have even known persons successfully con- 
sult this memory of the fingers (as it may be called) 
w r hen they have in vain questioned their intellectual 
memory. I remember a lady trying to recall an air, 
which once she could execute on the piano, and she 
could not do this, until she had (as she expressed it) 
" ceased thinking about it, and let her fingers go of 
themselves." Again : the operations of memory are 
impeded by the introspective consciousness. As Dar- 
win, in his Zoonomia, observes. — •• We frequently 
experience, when we are doubtful about the spelling 
of a word, that the greater voluntary exertion we 
use — that is, the more intensely we think about it. the 
further we are from regaining the lost a>>ociation, 
which readily recurs when we have become careless 
about it." 

Introspective consciousness, then, appears equally 
to mar our liberty and our memory both of thought 
and of motion ; and consequently it should seem that, 
in proportion as we can be exempted from its inter- 
ference, we must attain a higher state of intellect and 
of corporeal activity. 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 293 

This we may surmise ; but proof is not wanting to 
confirm it to us. The state of the philosopher who 
solved the problem of the universe was avowedly a 
state of abstraction and of self-foriretfulness ; and it 
is equally well known that natural sleepwakers, who 
can never be supposed capable of self-scrutiny, will 
achieve feats, which would !>e the horror of their 
waking moments. They will stand, self-balanced, 
on the ridge of a house, where, under the usual con- 
ditions of consciousness, they could not preserve their 
equilibrium for a single moment : they will cross a 
roaring torrent on a single plank: — but, if suddenly 
awakened tea contemplation of themselves or their 
situation, thej irill lose their footing, or perhaps die 
ot" alarm. Are these examples too far removed from 
ienri experience! We #ill then bring the matter 
at once home to every one's personal feelings. What 

is it that accompanies and adds to the awkwardness 
caused by timidity: An o\ < i-w atchfulness, a care 
that mars itself — in fine, the too predominant pres- 
ence of the introspective consciousness. The shy 
scarcely <*\ei forget themselves, as it is called — 
make them do so, and their deportment is at once 
improved. 

Consciousness having now been defined, and its 
principal varieties of action noted, it will he instruc- 
tive to observe how far it is peculiarly modified in 
mesmeric Bleepwaking, and how far it is acting in 
harmony with known and established laws. On ex- 
amination. 1 imagine it will appear that mesmerism 
is not that violation of nature's order which it has by 

some been deemed to be ; — but that, on the con^ 
25* 



294 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

trary, the changes, which it induces in our being, 
are in strict accordance with well-known principles, 
which are of the commonest application, and which 
may be easily tested in ourselves. 

First, then, we have gathered, from the observa- 
tions which have lately been brought forward, that, 
in proportion as introspective consciousness is an- 
nulled, the powers of thought and of motion are de- 
veloped. 

Now that the mesmeric state, compared by some 
to that of sleep, by others to that of delirium, can be 
a state of self-watchfulness, no one will, I think, main- 
tain. It is what is vulgarly called a state of com- 
plete unconsciousness. In corroboration of this, it 
may be observed that mesmerised persons speak with 
a freedom, instances of which being related to them 
in their waking condition cause them surprise and 

even vexation. Anna M , in sleepwaking, once 

lectured me on burdening myself with so many effects 
in traveling, and yet, in her natural state, almost 
wept to think she had been guilty of so much rude- 
ness. It was plain that, when awake, she was able 
to reflect upon her own conduct in a manner which 
she could not while sleeping mesmericallv. 

Again : sleepwakers seem wholly unable to scru- 
tinise their own sensations, and, if questioned con- 
cerning them, will (as I have in other places re- 
marked) give confused and even irrational replies. 
Moreover, if asked to be self-observant, when per- 
forming any thing, their actions come to a stand still, 
and the very efforts which they make at reflection 
prove their inability to exercise that faculty. 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 295 

Introspective consciousness, then, may be pro- 
nounced to be absent in the mesmeric slumber ; and, 
consequent upon that absence, we find — exactly as 
in the normal condition of man — an improvement 
both of thought and motion in the mesmeric sleep- 
waker. Proofs of this will be found in former pages 
of this work. Not only have mesmerised persons 
been shown to reason with a perspicuity of which 
they were incapable at other times, but to display a 
grace and freedom of gesture wholly different from 
the constraint of their habitual deportment. 

Thus the perfection of motion, and superior co- 
herence of thought, which mesmeric sleepwakers dis- 
play, in connection frith the absence of introspective 
consciousness, is bul a higher grade of a known con- 
dition. — the extension and not the alteration of a 
principle. 



The second law of our normal condition, with which 
I would show the mesmeric state to coincide, is — 
that, in proportion as the intellectual consciousness 
is heightened in its character and spirituality, the 
physical consciousness IS deadened and depressed. 

The accuracy of this posjtion may be tested by 
every one under the most common circumstances of 
life. In Mates of even trifling abstraction we become 
insensible to slight bodily discomforts ; and, while me- 
ditating inwardly on themes that are interesting to 
us, we frequently maintain one position until our 
nerves are compressed and our circulation hindered 
to a degree sufficient to compel us back to our phy- 



296 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS* 

sical sensations* Again : when We are suffering from 
slight headache, or other temporary derangements of 
the system, should any subject strongly rivet our at- 
tention, we become, by degrees, less and less sensible 
of the inconvenience, and, at length, (as it is phrased) 
forget our pains. The principle runs through all 
mankind — from infancy to age. A child falls, 
receives a hurt, and begins to cry. Speak to it — 
arouse its mental activity, and its tears cease long 
before the mere mechanical injury that set them flow- 
ing has been done away. Pursuing the same law to 
its higher instances of application, we arrive at the 
holy abstraction of religious men and the elevated 
faith of martyrs, who have smiled on bodily anguish 
to the last, not only triumphing over, but becoming 
insensible to, agony, while their songs of praise and 
joy ascended to heaven from the torturing wheel or 
the consuming flame. 

But this entire spiritualizing of humanity is of rare 
occurrence, and, should we desire to behold the more 
striking conquest of mind over matter, it is plain that 
we must seek them in some other than our normal 
condition, — amidst our loftiest abstractions, as we 
are at present constituted, the body drags us down to 
earth. Those busy inlets of conscious sensation, 
which yield us so many pleasures and so many pains, 
are continually marring the higher processes of our 
intellect by their exquisite capacity to receive im- 
pressions. A Newton's chain of thought may be for 
ever broken by the buzzing of an unlucky fly : and 
links so subtle, when once severed, how difficult are 
they to be again united ! The power of total ab- 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 297 

straction were, to great minds, power indeed ! In 
sleep, it is true, our senses are under a strict warden- 
ship, but then reason is also fettered. Yet even from 
sleep we may gather how much stronger is the force 
of mind, when no longer dissipated by external 
things. Every one who has dreamed of sorrow and 
alarm will confess with what unusual awhilness their 
stern images have stood forth from amidst the sur- 
rounding blankness of slumber. It is only in sleep that 
we can become, as it were, one thought of agony. 
Our impressions are then violent, because they are 
unmitigated. There is none of that counterpoise of 
the senses, which, under true waking sorrow, we 

acknowledge to be so merciful a part of our consti- 
tution ; lor. could we h\e under the pressure of 
xxne afflictions, did UOl external things sometimes 

take as off from oareehresi Occasionally, also, we 

enjoy in Bleep, happine<s which appears to be more 
than earthly. — 

11 Dreams such as lull the hermit in his shades." 

Yet. strOQg as are the bands which slumber can 
cast around us, the senses are not always so entirely 
fettered but that their imperfect action shall dimly 
influence the nature of our visions. Moreover, a 
mere touch, a casual noise, may at any time disperse 
the most agreeable picture- of sleep's shadowy crea- 
tion, and recall us at once to the world and to the 
pressure of all its trifles, — 

li Heavy as frost, and deep, almost, as life." 

Where then shall we find an abstraction so profound, 



298 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

yet so peculiar, as to bind the senses fast, yet leave 
the intellect a wider scope, a vigor more effective ? 

These conditions we find alone united in the mes- 
meric slumber. More perfect than any that opiates 
can produce, it is also so far beyond the reach of 
accidental dispersion, that painful surgical operations 
have been performed during its continuance. Yet, 
on the other hand, reason, which in the natural sleep 
is either quenched, or but feebly active, burns brighter 
in that which we are now considering. 

That mesmeric patients speak always truth, is no 
doubtful proof of this, — they perceive all the irra- 
tiDi ality of falsehood. Be it observed, too, that the 
insensibility of the body under mesmerism, bears no 
resemblance whatever to the deadness caused by 
narcotics or any thing that affects the mere mechan- 
ism of existence. The mind of the mesmeric sleep- 
waker is not benumbed together with the body, but 
it has retired into its inner fastnesses, with all its 
susceptibilities and functions unimpaired. It medi- 
, tates, and is absorbed, and gives to the countenance 
(even should the physiognomy in general be of no 
elevated cast,) a loftier character, and a look of in- 
ward contemplation, which has frequently struck even 
the most careless observer of the mesmeric slumber. 

To the state of abstraction, then, a state so well 
known in its inferior degrees to all persons, mesme- 
ric sleepwaking bears no trifling analogy, and it ex- 
hibits the two phenomena of intellectual activity and 
corporeal deadness, heightened, indeed, to an extra- 
ordinary pitch, yet still preserving the same coexist- 
ence which they present in ordinary life. 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 299 

A third law of our being, with which mesmerism 
is in perfect harmony, is the following. 

Consciousness, whether it relate to sensation or to 
intellectual exertion, acts more forcibly the more it is 
brought to bear upon a single point. 

Who has not felt that the senses, by their simul- 
taneous action, are restrictions the one upon the 
other? How seldom can we be wholly absorbed in 
the pleasures of the eye ! How seldom, when listen- 
ing to sweet sounds, can we become "all ear!" 
There is almost always a something to be deducted 
from our feelings by the interference of some other 
sense than that we desire to exercise. Were all our 
capacities! of sensation concentrated upon any one 
property of matter, we may judge how much stronger 
would be the force of our perceptions, by observing 
that, where one sense 1- actually wanting (as in the 

blind or deaf, for instance.) the vivacity of impressions 
received through the other organs is greatly in- 
creased. We may remark, too, in ourselves, that 
not only the stillness of night, but its obscurity, 
which concentrates our attention upon objects of 
hearing, quickens the auditory powers in an extraor- 
dinary degree. 

Again, as regards the exercise of our mental capa- 
cities, experience inculcates, as one of the precepts 
of wisdom, that, if we wish to do a thing perfectly, 
we must do it singly : and, though stories have been 
told of great, or would-be great men, who have play- 
ed games at chess and dictated letters to secretaries 
at the same time, it has not been said that the chess 
would not have been better played and the letter 



300 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

better composed, had the attention been directed 
solely either to one or the other. Napoleon had an 
extraordinary power of directing his mind, when 
needful, to a multitude of simultaneous occupations ; 
but, when tracing the plan of a battle, he sate alone 
in his tent, and watched while others slept. Besides, 
correctly speaking, it is not pretended that the mind 
can do more than one thing at once, it merely leaps 
from one object of attention to another with aston- 
ishing swiftness and versatility ; while, in that very 
versatility it loses force, and abjures that continuity 
which is the element of greatness. 

When then we find that there is a remarkable 
singleness in the consciousness of mesmeric sleep- 
wakers, and that whatever they do absorbs them 
wholly, we shall perhaps have less reason to be 
astonished at the great eminence to which their per- 
ceptive and reasoning faculties attain. Indeed, the 
concentration of the mind, in mesmerism, is such as 
I should imagine to be unattainable under any other 
condition, — all the bodily organs being, as it were, 
annulled, there are none of those conflicting con- 
sciousnesses which, in actual life, destroy each other, 
like meeting waves in water. Whatever source of 
perception mesmerised persons possess appears rather 
to consist in one sense than in many, — in one sense 
which can become each of the others, so that he. who 
exercises it, seems to become, by turns, a hearing, 
seeing, or feeling unity. 

It occurs to me here to make a remark connected 
with this part of my subject. 

Persons in the mesmeric state, however generally 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 301 

sentient to any injury inflicted on their mesmeriser, 
will, if expressly employed by him in any absorbing 
effort, appear heedless of those experiments of pain 
which may be tried upon him. This is but a natural 
result of their singleness of perception ; and, more- 
over, it is evident that all persons, even in the normal 
state, will be insensible to pain, if it bear an inferior 
proportion to the degree of their mental abstraction* 
Yet some persons have triumphantly referred to this 
as a proof of the nullity of an experiment, which 
only failed because it was not tried under the proper 
and necessary conditions. 

On the whole, it appears that the increase of per- 
ception and of mental power in mesmerised persons, 
found as it is in combination with a concentrated 
attention, is in exact accordance with the constitution 
of our intellectual and physical being, 

V« t more than this, the forgetfulness, in the waking 
state, of thoughts which occupied the mind during 
mesmeric Bleepwaking, is in harmony with other 
known phenomena of consciousness. 

It appears to be a law, that the less of introspective 
consciousness has been present. to a state, the less 
memory is there of that state. 

This is evident : for, when we have been engaged 
in a reverie, or a series of simple consciousnesses, 
which die as soon as born, — k * the perfume and sup- 
pliance of a minute," that we have been thinking is 
very sure, but of the subject matter of that thinking 
we retain no recollection. Locke says, " I confess 
myself to have one of those dull souls, that doth not 
perceive itself always to contemplate ideas ;" and the 
20 



802 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

poet Cowper, evidently copying from the illustrious 
metaphysician, before drawing an admirable picture 
of himself in a reverie, confesses 

" Fearless, a mind that does not always think." 

Every one will probably be ready to make a similar 
avowal ; but we must not forget that this state of 
apparent no-thought, is, in fact, only one of our 
modes of thinking. Acknowledging that w T e do not 
perceive ourselves always to contemplate ideas, we 
by no means affirm that we have not always ideas to 
contemplate (though, indeed, I believe Locke meant 
his readers to draw such a conclusion), and the 
absence of the reflex act of the mind, whereby we 
are, as it were, present to ourselves, cannot annihilate 
the simple unreflective action of momentary con- 
sciousness. Cowper, indeed, by his description of 
the objects which he has seen in his winter's fire, 
during what he calls " a waking dream," proves that, 
in that dream, his mind, though but idly busy, was 
still employed, nay even somewhat attentive to its own 
operations, for he remembers vaguely the shadowy 
ideas that floated across his fancy. It is not every 
one, however, who can have a poet's reverie, or turn 
it to such good account as Cowper. In general, 
when we have fallen into what some call " a brown 
study," the fit is succeeded by a total forgetfulness of 
the elements which composed it, and the friend who 
startles us from our absent mood, by tapping us on 
the shoulder,' and exclaiming, " a penny for your 
thoughts," can obtain no other answer than " I was 
thinking of nothing." Still we retain a confused 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 303 

notion that the apparent blank was really peopled by 
the ever-restless mind ; though, not having observed 
our thoughts, we feel that we cannot remember them. 
This is common reverie ; but there is a deeper de- 
gree of it than this. In some cases, as Darwin has 
remarked, i: it becomes a formidable disease ;" and 
this advanced stage of a mood, which is experienced 
in a less degree by us all. is characterized (according 
to the authority just quoted) by •• the total forget- 
fulness of what passes" during its continuance, and 
" surprise on recovering ?? from it. 

Observe, too. how the loftier state of abstraction 
indicates the same proportion between the introspec- 
tive consciousness and memory. 

In abstraction, as 1 have already shown, there is 
but a low degree of self-observation present ; for 
from the moment that we examine our springs of 
thought too curiously they cease to play. But it may 
further be remarked that, duripg abstraction, the 

retrospective consciousness supplies the place of the 
introspective, we stopping from time to time to re- 
view our thoughts^and to fix in our own memories 
that which originated fronfpur own minds. Only in 
so far as we do this, are the workings of our intellect 
rendered permanent. Should arty one suddenly in- 
terrupt pur train of ideas, in one of our inattentive 
intervals, or before the whole series is connected and 
complete, how often we (to use a common expres- 
sion) ** lose the thread of our thoughts," which by no 
effort of memory we can recover. 

In abstracted study, also, it should be remembered 
that we are often writing down the actual thoughts 



304 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

of the moment, making our pen the engraver of our 
ideas, and our paper the organ of our remembrance. 
Thus is preserved much of our brain- work, which 
otherwise would have perished in the thinking. This 
is more than conjecture ; for often, after a few hours, 
we have so far forgotten our compositions, as to read 
them with what is called " a new eye," and to detect 
faults in them which surprise ourselves, they having 
escaped our observation so long as our effervescing 
fancy predominated over our self-consciousness. Dr. 
Johnson, it is well known, met with his own Rasselas 
many years after its publication, and read it, as he 
himself declares, with as strange a feeling as if it had 
been the work of another person. In Lockhart's life 
of Scott, a similar and more remarkable phenomenon 
is recorded. The great novelist composed that grand 
story, the Bride of Lammermoor. while suffering from 
excruciating spasmodic attacks which caused him to 
have recourse to frequent doses of laudanum. He 
dictated nearly the whole work under these painful 
circumstances ; and it is said that, " though he often 
turned himself on Ins pillow, with a groan of torment, 
he usually continued the sentence in the same breath. 
But, when dialogue of peculiar animation was in pro- 
gress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over matter 
— he arose from his couch, and walked up and down 
the room, raising and lowering his voice, and. as it 
were, acting the parts." 

But what is most extraordinary is. that, after the 
book was published, Scott assured James Ballantyne 
that, " when it was first put into his hands in a com- 
plete shape, he did not recollect one single incident, 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 305 

character, or conversation that it contained ! ' For a 
long time,' he said, 6 I felt myself very uneasy, in the 
course of my reading, lest I should be startled by 
meeting something altogether glaring and fantastic' ' 
Ballantyne, by whom the anecdote was preserved, 
adds, " I do not think I ever ventured to lead to the 
discussion of this singular phenomenon again ; but 
you may depend on it, that what I have now said is 
as distinctly reported as if it had been taken down in 
short-hand at the moment ; I should not otherwise 
have ventured to allude to the matter at all. I 
believe you will agree with me in thinking that the 
history of the human mind contains nothing more 
wonderful." 

A similar instance (though on a small scale) of the 
mind's forgetfulness of its own previous operations, 
fell under my own cognizance. 

Some years ago, 1 met once in society poor Mrs, 
Maclean — then the admired L. E. L. A song was 
sung, the words of which struck me as very beautiful, 
and the young poetess seemed to be of the same 
opinion, for she expressed her admiration of them 
warmly, asking at the same time, who wrote them ? 
The gentleman who had sung the song laughed, and 
said, " Surely you remember your own poetry ! " It 
was a long time, however, before the authoress could 
be made to recall when or where she wrote the 
words ; which, however, at last she recognised as 
one of those improvisations which she was accus- 
tomed to write down, give away, and never think of 
again. 

That w r e occasionally remember the dreams that 

26* 



306 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 



we have had in sleep may be urged as contradictory 
of the theory I am advocating ; for can dreaming, it 
may be asked, in any way be called a state of intro- 
spective consciousness ? I reply, certainly it can and 
must. Nothing is more evident than that, in dream- 
ing, the mind watches its own fantastic train of 
thought, since what is the imagery of our dreams 
but its own creation, and who is the spectator of that 
imagery but itself? There is in the phenomenon of 
dreaming an especial duality of action, only to be 
explained (unless, indeed, we admit, with some wild 
author, whose name I forget, that all our dreams are 
the work of spirits,) by that reflux act of the mind 
which is so swift in its operation as virtually to doubly 
our existence. Moreover, it is to be remarked that 
natural sleepwaking — a state very different from 
that of common sleep — is almost always succeeded 
by complete forgetfulness. The exceptions occur 
when the patient's visions more resemble those of 
ordinary dreaming, and when the mind has been 
manifestly more employed about its own creations 
than about those real external objects which often 
seem to influence the sleepwaker, though in a wild 
and unconnected way. 

We may then dismiss, as uncorroborated by any 
fact whatever, the notion that we can remember any 
past series of thoughts to which introspective con- 
sciousness has been altogether wanting ; conse- 
quently, that mesmeric patients should forget all that 
occupied them during their sleepwaking is no mira- 
cle, but an obsolute illustration of nature's laws. 

But still further, if we choose to acquiesce in the 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 307 

structure of our own being, and to examine laws 
rather than frame them, we may perceive that the 
sleepwaker must naturally resume his mesmeric re- 
collections, when he returns to the mesmeric state ; 
for is it not a principle, that a former scries of thoughts 
should recur to us thou and then only, when we are 
wuhr conditions of consciousness similar to those in 
which they were conceived! 

Let any one reflect how he sets to work, when, 
having what is called lost the thread of his ideas, 
he would take it up again at the point where it was 
dissevered. Does he not endeavor to place himself 
in the same state and frame of mind, in fact, to re- 
gain the same conditions of consciousness in which 
he was when conceiving the lost idea ? Most cer- 
tainly. And what is also to be remarked is, that a 
restoration of even the same conditions of physical 
consciousness, under which our intellectual trains of 
thought were engendered, greatly promotes our re- 
collection of the latter. Not only a particular posi- 
tion of mind, hut a particular posture of body, aids 
us to regain a frame of feeling to which it has be- 
come associated. When we throw ourselves on our 
knees, our prayer of childhood seems to recur of 
itself. There are some even who can only pursue 
their trains of thought while engaged in some exer- 
tion of the physical consciousness which has become 
familiar to them. The following anecdote from the 
memoirs of Sir Walter Scott will illustrate this truth. 
It is recorded in a memorandum of his own. He 
says, " there was a boy in my class at school who 
stood always at the top, nor could I with all my 



308 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

efforts supplant him. Day came after day, and still 
he kept his place, do what I would ; till at length I 
observed that when a question was asked him, he 
always fumbled with his fingers at a particular but- 
ton in the lower part of his waistcoat. To remove 
it, therefore, became expedient in my eyes ; and, in 
an evil moment, it was removed with a knife. Great 
was my anxiety to know the success of my measure 
— and it succeeded too well. When the boy was 
again questioned, his fingers sought again for the 
button, but it was not to be found. In his distress 
he looked down for it — it was to be seen no more 
than to be felt. He stood confounded, and I took 
possession of his place." 

Again, we may observe that that action of the 
physical consciousness, which relates to the operation 
of our senses, is far more linked with memory than 
is the intellectual operation of consciousness. That 
which we have seen, heard, and felt, we remember 
far more strongly than that which we have only 
thought. The immediate action of the sensual con- 
sciousness is also peculiarly renovative of that which 
is past. The smell of a flower, which we knew in 
former days, will recall a thousand old forgotten feel- 
ings ; and the tinkling of a sheep-bell will bring be- 
fore us the wild heath, or the grassy hill-side, where 
our childhood sported. Thus, when the poet invokes 
memory, he does not summon her to appear in the 
pomp of intellectual splendor, but he says — 

" Come from the woods that belt the grey hill-side. 
The seven elms, the poplars four, 
That stand beside my father's door, 



MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 309 

And chiefly from the brook that loves 

To purl o'er matted cress, and ribbed sand, 

Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves." 

Tehhtsoh. 

Now lei us consider that, to a mesmeric patient, 
the ordinary sensual consciousness is closed, — that 
the motive of ponsciousness has ceased to be intro- 
ctive, — in tine, that all the conditions of con- 
re unusual, ('an we, then, wonder, either 
that he cannot grasp mesmeric memories in his nor- 
mal state. <>r that he should return to them with ease 
and perfection as soon as the unwonted conditions of 
In- mesmeric existence are restored ? To understand 
this perfectly, we have onlj to extend the principle 
whereby we lose or recover any train of thought 
whatever. Thus epileptics have been known to finish, 
in ;i now paroxysm of their complaint, i sentence 
begun in an attack which had occurred days or 
before; >w.<\ every one must remertiber the 
quaint story of the old gentleman who, in passing a 
particular bridge, answered a question that had been 
put to him Ion-- ago on the same spot. u Do vou 
like pea- or beans best for dinner ? M his old domestic 
had inquired, as he rode soberly behind his master. 
re was no reply: — but, j ar after, when 

master and man w < re jogging on as before, the for- 
mer turned -lowly round, and said, " Peas, John." 

Certain foots, relative to the mesmeric state, still 
further confirm our previous view of the question. 
Sometimes, when mesmeric sleepwakihg is not per- 
fect, it seems to alternate with the natural state; and 
the patient, occasionally waking, as it were, for a 
few moments, employs his ordinary senses in the or- 



310 MESMERIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

dinary way. Now, by frequent experience, I have 
ascertained that the remembrance which these pa- 
tients retain of circumstances that occurred during 
their sleepwaking is in exact proportion to the usual 
action of their senses ; in other words, to their ap- 
proximations to their ordinary conditions of con- 
sciousness. 

The real water of oblivion — the fabled Lethe — 
is only to be found where consciousness flows on 
through channels that are altogether unwonted. 

Thus, tfien, if I have shown, in a former book, 
that mesmeric sleepwaking is a peculiar state, and 
therefore worthy of distinct investigation, I have now 
proved that, though peculiar, it is in harmony with 
the general laws of our mental constitution ; and 
therefore proper to be classed with other metaphys- 
ical phenomena incident to man. I am, indeed, far 
from saying that it presents no extraordinary appear- 
ances ; but I must assert that it is by no means one 
of those subjects in which we cannot arrive at a com- 
prehension of things unknown by that with which we 
are already acquainted. Every common reverie is 
a sort of mesmeric slumber ; and an absent man 
lives, as it were, in a mesmeric world. In order to 
have a perfect idea of mesmeric sleepwaking. as far 
as regards the patient merely and his mental condi- 
tion, we have only to imagine a fusion between the 
two known states of reverie and of abstraction ; for 
the mesmeric sleep approximates to the first in its 
singleness of consciousness, its deadness to external 
stimulants, and its complete after-forgetfulness : while 
it resembles the latter in coherence of thought and 
intellectual development. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 311 



SECTION III. 



ON MESMERIC SENSATION. 



Having shown that the metaphysical condition of 
mesmeric patients is in harmony with general laws 
and with personal experience, it is now my intention 
to offer some observations, whereby the phenomena 
of sensation, in the mesmeric state, may also be 
brought nearer to our convictions. 

In attempting this. I must necessarily sometimes 
abandon the region of purely personal experience. 
The real causes of OTen our ordinary sensation 
(though they may be made mathematically evident 
to reason) are themselves at variance with our com- 
mon feelings, and arc altogether hidden from the per- 
ception of the vulgar. Yet to these real causes I 
must appeal in explanation of mesmeric phenomena. 
In order to reveal one and the same base for normal 
and for mesmeric sensation, I must pierce that which 
seems, and penetrate to that which is. Yet will it, I 
trust, be found that, wherever the subject permits, I 
retain that best mode of argument — the arirumentum 
ad hominem. 

Already I have remarked that, sensation being 
really seated in the mind, a change in its prerequi- 
sites can never imply an abolition of itself. But we 
may affirm more than this, and adduce facts which 



312 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

shall afford us the strongest presumption that, in the 
mesmeric state, the pre-requisites of sensation, how- 
ever changed, are only altered in conformity with 
established laws ; in fine, that the development of 
mesmeric feeling is in perfect accordance with na- 
ture. That it has not hitherto appeared so, seems to 
be rather the fault of its expositors than the neces- 
sity of its own mode of action. They who would 
examine into the conditions of mesmeric perception 
are, in general, so engrossed by its more prominent 
and superficial wonders, that they rest in external 
differences of development, instead of going deeper 
to discover internal identity of origin. They look 
merely to unusual effects, and do not consider that 
the causes of these may be such as are actually fa- 
miliar to us. 

The pervading peculiarity of mesmeric perception 
may be thus briefly expressed : — 

Inaction of the external apparatus of the senses, 
co-existent with the life and activity of some inner 
source of feeling. 

That such an apparent anomaly is not so far re- 
moved from the ordinary operations of our being, as 
on a cursory view of things we might suppose, I trust 
in the course of the following reflections to demon- 
strate. 

Every fact, adduced to prove the reality of mes- 
meric perception, has been hitherto met with but one 
argument, which your established formalist — your 
limiter of Providence and its resources, deems unan- 
swerable. " Our external organs are the sole ap- 
pointed means of sensation. How would you then 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 313 

that we should perceive any thing without their 
aid ? " 

That there is a flaw in this reasoning is not so dif- 
ficult to be discovered. It is a mere begging of the 
question, and proceeds altogether upon an assump- 
tion, the fallacy of which I will, at least, endeavor to 
expose. 

Many and striking are the circumstances which 
assure us that the nerves are the true media of sen- 
sation, to which the external organs are only instru- 
mental and subsidiary. 

For, in the first place, from the anatomist we may 
learn that many apparently essential portions of the 
external sms< > may be removed, or may exist not, 
without any perceptible difference in sensation. As 
regards the ear, we find thai " the pinna is not indis- 
pensable to hearing; for. both in men and animals, 
it may be removed without any inconvenience beyond 
that of a few days."* Again : u The membrane of 
the tympanum may be torn, or even totally destroyed, 
without deranging the hearing in any sensible de- 
gree ; " and " the loss of the small bones in the tym- 
panum, with the exception of the stapes, does not 
necessarily incur a loss of hearing." 

With respect to the sense of smelling, it appears 
that "the olfactory apparatus is but little developed 
at birth. The nasal cavities, the different convoluted 
bodies scarcely exist : the sinuses do not exist at all, 
and yet the faculty of smelling appears to exist." l 



1 Milligan's Magendie. 
27 



314 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

Nay, even parts of a mechanism so wondrous as that 
of the eye seem not to be essential to vision. 

" The contraction of the pupil, though it assists 
our vision of distant objects, is not absolutely neces- 
sary, since Daviel has shown that patients having the 
pupil immovable see well enough." Also, " Persons 
who have had the lens removed for cataract, still see 
sufficiently well." ' 

Considerable alterations, then, may occur in the 
external apparatus of the senses without sensation 
being impaired. But is this indifference, as to losses 
in their structure, shared by the nerves ? Far from 
it. The smallest abstraction — the slightest change, 
even, is of consequence here ! Whatever deranges 
the nerves manifestly introduces a corresponding dis- 
turbance into our sensations, and, should any of them 
undergo a substantial change or be entirely annulled, 
the sensitive functions of the part, to which they re- 
fer, cease altogether. Thus injuries to the optic or 
acoustic nerve will produce blindness or deafness re- 
spectively, though the external mechanism of sight 
or hearing remain entire ; and, if the lingual nerve 
be cut, the tongue continues to move, but has lost its 
sensibility to savors. " These effects may be pro- 
duced at pleasure upon animals, by tying or com- 
pressing the nerves. When the ligature or pressure 
is removed, the part then becomes sensible as be- 
fore." 

Magendie also states that, where there is faulty 
sensation, it generally originates in defects rather of 

1 Milligan's Magendie. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 315 

the nervous than of the organic structure. This 
dependence of the external senses upon the nerves 
should diminish our surprise at finding the former 
occasionally retreat from offices which they only fulfil, 
as it were, by delegation, while the true powers, as in 
mesmerism, come forward to manifest their capaci- 
ties, more palpably, indeed, but not more essentially, 
than usual. 

Secondly, The nerves or portions of the brain 
with which they are in immediate relation, are capa- 
ble of gradations in their sensibility. 

The proofs of this lie before us in every direction. 
Though the structure of the externa] organs be alike 
in all (of course, we except cases of acknowledged 
malformation,) the capacities to which they minister, 
are. in different individuals, infinitely varied. Thus, 
of two persons, whose auditory organs are equally 
perfect, one shall have a far finer sense of hearing 
than the other. The one. perhaps, may mistake, as 
did a friend of mine, the tuning of instruments be- 
fore a concert for the overture ; the other shall de- 
tect the slightest false note which may occur in an 
otherwise well-executed piece of music. While 
some again possess by nature that sense of color 
which guided Reubens to all the harmonies of vision ; 
others, with no perceptible defect in the mechanism 
of their eyes, cannot distinguish between the most 
opposite colors. A man with this infirmity has been 
known to order a pair of trousers of the most flagrant 
red, supposing them all the time to be modest 
blue. 



316 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

Others are incapable of even hearing certain sounds, 
for which 

" Nature, though giving two, gave them no ear." 

I was acquainted with a gentleman, who was com- 
pletely insensible to the chirp of the cricket. Walk- 
ing with him and with a large party one summer 
evening in his grounds, I observed to him that the 
grasshoppers were more numerous and more noisy 
just then than I had ever heard them. They literally 
seemed to get the better of our voices. To my sur- 
prise, my friend refused to believe that any grasshop- 
pers were chirping, and was only at length convinced 
of the fact by the united testimony of all the persons 
present. In order to ascertain whether this peculi- 
arity of sensation depended upon any general defect 
in the organs of hearing, I held a watch at a consi- 
derable distance from my friend's ear, but he dis- 
tinctly perceived it ticking. Again, I placed the watch 
at an equal distance from him and from myself, at a 
point where the grasshopper concert completely pre- 
vented me from hearing it ; yet to him it was as audi- 
ble as if perfect stillness had prevailed. He was also 
cognizant of words spoken in the lowest whisper, 
which no other person but himself could distinguish 
amidst the din of the insects. What can be more 
evident than that this inability to distinguish a par- 
ticular sound arose from a defective sensibility in the 
acoustic nerve, which had not the capacity of respond- 
ing to aerial vibrations, rapid as those by which a 
note so shrill as the cricket's cry is produced ? 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 317 

Thus it appears that the nervous sensibility of one 
man varies as much from that of another, as the mes- 
meric from the normal. 

This again should lessen our wonder when we be- 
hold a state of nervous sensibility which surpasses 
our conceptions even. That we cannot judge of it no 
more proves its non-existence than the defective 
hearing of some persons annihilates certain sounds. 
When we, being in one state, pronounce a verdict 
upon phenomena exhibited by those who are in ano- 
ther, we act as does the blind man who dictatorially 
gives his opinion respecting colors. 

Thirdly, The nerves are subject to varieties of 
condition, not only in different individuals, but in 
the same. 

That the nerves may vary in their functions of 
transmission is not only possible, but inevitable, and 
consequent upon the very constitution of man's na- 
ture. Not only dors every disease which affects the 
nervous tissue affect the phenomena of sensation, but 
the commonest occurrences of our ordinary existence 
influence them likewise. Viewing the nerves as con- 
ductors, along whose sentient line dart those electric 
impulses which convey to us information of the ex- 
ternal world, we may assert that they are seldom in 
the same conducting condition. In reverie, how 
deadened is their transmitting power ! how enlivened 
under the excitement of hope, or fear, when we look 
or listen for the arrival of a friend, or of some mes- 
senger of evil ! How differently do they act under 
the relaxation of fatigue or the tension of vigorous 
energy ! Sleep alters their capacities of conduction 
27* 



318 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

in a thousand varying degrees, exhibiting phenomena 
only less wonderful than those of mesmerism because 
more frequently repeated. 

In how extraordinary a manner trifling causes may 
change the nature of sensation, one or two incidents 
which have fallen under my own notice may demon- 
strate. A friend of mine, when suffering from slight 
derangement of stomach, is apt to see every object 
double (smile not, reader, he is a water-drinker) ; 
and I am, myself, occasionally subject to a singular 
affection of the optic nerve. When fatigued by an 
effort of continued attention, where the light is too 
vivid (as in a theatre, for instance), I see every object 
diminished and removed to a distance, as if I looked 
on it through the reversed end of a telescope. 1 

At one period, for three months, during which my 
digestion was slightly out of order, I was entirely 
deprived both of taste and of smell. All that I ate 
was as so much earth ; and I could not distinguish 
between a cabbage and a cabbage-rose : again, a 
gentleman of my acquaintance lost, and never after- 
wards recovered, his smell, in consequence of a fall 
from his horse, which had no other perceptible re- 
sult. 

Phenomena like these, not less than everyday 
events, assure us that every separate state of man 
is a separate and peculiar condition of nerves ; and 
that every peculiar condition of nerves has its pecu- 

1 Here it is evident that the weaker impression, caused by the 
exhausted and over-excited state of the nerve, produces the idea 
of diminution and distance, just as we judge that a feeble sound 
proceeds from afar. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 319 

liarity of sensation. When, then, we learn that mes- 
merism induces alteration in our sensitive capacities, 
why should we be as full of wonder as if nothing 
else could work a change in them ? Were we wise, 
we should, from all we know of the nerves, be pre- 
pared at least to anticipate new results from new 
conditions of man ; and certainly to expect from 
a state so singular as that of mesmeric sleepwaking 
some singular variety of nervous action. That the 
effects of the human influence on the nerves should 
be new to our experience, so far from being extraor- 
dinary, is but in the common routine of things ; for 
the state of mesmerism itself is new to our expe- 
rience. Did the nervous system present the same 
phenomena under this peculiar phasis, as under other 
circumstances, then, indeed, would it violate the laws 
of nature, and forego its own. 

The nerves, then, are capable of changes in their 
condition : but. change, it may be argued, is not im- 
provement, and the instances adduced of nervous 
alteration tend to show that their power may be les- 
sened, rather than increased, — deranged, rather than 
brilliantly exhibited. But mesmerism purports to be 
an expansion and a gain in nervous energy. Let us 
then inquire whether the same force, which is sus- 
ceptible of diminution or disturbance, possesses also 
inherent capacities of development. That nerves are 
sensible to stimuli we know. When their power 
has been impaired, — nay, to all appearance per- 
fectly lost, it may, by particular influences, be tran- 
siently restored to all its pristine vigor. That the 
blind occasionally regain, beneath the warmth of a 



320 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 



summer's noon, a power of vision which declines 
with the sun and is again altogether lost at its set- 
ting, is a fact which I need not insist upon to 
physiologists ; and a friend of mine has assured me 
that he has frequently known the opium-eaters of 
the East, after they had become both blind and deaf 
from over-indulgence in their favorite drug, regain 
both sight and hearing while under the accustomed 
excitement. Stimulus, then, may appear to work 
nervous miracles, and this plainly indicates a capa- 
city in the nerves to rise as well as sink — to gain 
force as well as to lose it. But w r e may go farther 
still. The nervous power, under certain circum- 
stances, may not only be exhibited as recovering the 
energy it had lost, but as transcending itself, and 
displaying a capacity of development, the limits of 
which have not been ascertained. They who have 
had opportunities of studying disease in all its forms 
will corroborate me when I assert that, on a depres- 
sion of the vital powers, an increase of the sentient 
capacities is often consequent ; and that persons 
under certain derangements of the system have 
manifested a nervous sensibility, than which, mes- 
merism can display nothing more astonishing. The 
Chevalier Filippi of Milan, doctor of medicine, and a 
most determined opponent to mesmerism, has ac- 
knowledged to me that some of his patients, more par- 
ticularly women after their confinement, when suffer- 
ing from nervous excitement, have distinguished the 
smallest objects in darkness which appeared to him 
complete. The same physician related to me the 
following occurrence : — Visiting a gentleman who 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 321 

had an abscess, he found that the patient had not 
many hours to live ; this, however, he did not tell 
him, but answered his inquiries about himself as en- 
couragingly as he could. Taking his leave, he shut 
the door of the sick chamber, and, passing through 
two other rooms, the doors of which he also carefully 
shut, entered an apartment where some friends of 
the patient were assembled. To these he said, 
speaking all the time in that low and cautious tone 
which every one, in a house where illness is, uncon- 
sciously adopts, — " The Signor Valdrighi (that was 
the name of the invalid) is much worse. He can- 
not possibly survive till morning." Scarcely had 
he uttered these words, when the patient's bell was 
heard to rimr violently, and. soon after, a servant 
summoned the doctor hack again into his presence. 

" Why did you deceive me V 1 exclaimed the dying 
man ; u 1 heard every word you said just now in the 
farther apartment/' Of this extraordinary assertion 
he immediately gave proof by repeating to the aston- 
ished physician the exact expression* he had made 
use of. Subsequently, upon Dr. Filippi testifying his 
surprise at this occurrence to the servants of Signor 
Valdrighi, they declared that their master's hearing 
had become so acute since his illness, that he had fre- 
quently told them all they had been talking of in 
the kitchen, which was even more remote from the 
sick room than the apartment before alluded to. 

The gnat-strainers and camel-swallowers may be 
content to accept this story, just because it only pro- 
fesses to relate an instance of exaltation in the usual 
senses ; but what does this convenient phrase, " ex- 



322 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

altation of the senses " mean ? Is it not " Words — 
words — words ;" one of those formulae which seem 
to account for every thing, while, in fact, explaining 
nothing? Considered as a not very precise state- 
ment, it may pass ; but when persons would palm it 
upon us as a solution, I would ask them whether 
"■exaltation of the senses " (in the common accepta- 
tion of the term) be possible ? There may be de- 
velopment, or, if you will, exaltation in our sensitive 
capacities — but how, or where ? If we desire to 
have clear notions on this subject, we must perforce 
inquire whether any increase of sentient power which 
may fall under our observation be in the external 
organs, or whether it be derived from the nerves 
which are masked by those organs ? 

In what manner we should resolve this problem 
would not be doubtful, but for a certain confusion of 
idea, which is extremely prevalent, respecting two 
portions of our being, between whose functions and 
qualities there can be no parallel. Led by custom, 
and blinded by apparent simultaneity of action, we 
associate the external apparatus, and the internal 
sources of sensation in one common term, — the 
senses, namely ; while, in fact, not only are they not 
the same, but opposed to each other in every essential 
particular. 

While the action of the exterior organs is always 
the same, under the same circumstances, that of the 
nerves is ever-variable. The powers of the one are 
limited and known ; that of the other has not been 
ascertained. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 323 

Is it not evident, then, that the mechanism of sen- 
sation is swayed and regulated by something which 
is not mechanical ? 

Is it not plain that the external senses are but the 
letters and ciphers of the scale, — fixed marks, which, 
by their unalterable character, point out how high 
may rise, or how low may fall, the variable mercury 
of our internal sensibility ? 

These truths, it is to be hoped, are known to phy- 
siologists at least ; yet how many even of these speak 
and argue as if they were entirely ignorant of them. 
When sensitive power is manifestly increased, where 
then shall we look for an explanation : there, where 
all is precise, limited, ascertained ; or there, where 
all is free and boundless, where variety is infinite, and 
capacity unknown ? Can we for a moment make it 
a question as to where the true power lies ? Can we 
for a moment ascribe it to the external organs, which, 
far from being capable of development, seem rather 
to be restrictions upon internal sensibility by their 
exact and circumscribed action ? 

Now let us once more refer to the examples of de- 
veloped sensibility which prefaced the above remarks. 
Certain invalids, it was affirmed, upon indubitable 
testimony, had been known to distinguish the small- 
est objects in a room, whence light, according to or- 
dinary vision, seemed perfectly excluded, or had heard 
articulate sounds athwart impediments, which, in or- 
dinary cases, are sufficient to prevent all transmission 
of acoustic impulses. The usual organs of sense 
were not in any way mechanically assisted daring the 
exhibition of the phenomena by external aids, such 



324 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

as those of optical glasses, or acoustic tubes ; they 
were dependent solely on their own resources. Those 
resources, as we have just observed, are very strictly 
limited by mechanical and physical laws, which are 
incapable of change. In the case of the eye, where 
there is light, there will be a picture formed upon the 
retina with a clearness and vivacity proportioned to 
the intensity of that light ; or, supposing the pheno- 
menon to regard the ear, wherever aerial vibrations 
exist, they will strike the tympanum with a force that 
corresponds with the violence and extent of the ori- 
ginal impulse ; but, in the instances cited of sensitive 
acuteness, the effect is inverse to the known cause. 
The patient sees in a dark room where no picture 
can be supposed to be formed on the retina ; or hears 
in a situation where vibrations of the air, if even pro- 
pagated so far, can with difficulty be conceived to 
affect any membrane, however elastic. Under such 
circumstances, everything is plainly against an in- 
crease of sentient power: yet power is gained 
how ? or whence ? Whatever may be thought of 
the credulity of a mesmeriser, I have not faith enough 
to believe in modern miracles, when they are so in- 
terpreted as to falsify mechanic laws. I will not, 
then, load the external organs with the onus of im- 
possible causation ; but that the nerves of sensation 
may, in particular states, vibrate to fainter impulses, 
or even other media ] than those which more grossly 
move the mechanism of sense, I may admit to be a 
probable explanation of events like the above : — at 

1 See the ensuing remarks on the media of sensation. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 325 

any rate, one truth from the preceding observations 
is clear. The extraordinary exaltation of the senses, 
whereof we have been speaking, was not in the or- 
gans, (that is barred by an ex absurdo) but in the 
nerves that minister to the organs. 

Thus it appears that, in certain cases, the nerves 
may be exhibited in a state of development which 
manifestly owes nothing to the mere organs of sense, 
and which far oversteps the province of any one por- 
tion of our external mechanism. When, then, mes- 
merism palpably excludes the external organs from a 
share in the sensitive developments which it elicits, 
when it effectuates a revelation of sensibility spring- 
in- from an internal source, it may in this, as in many 
other respects, be said to detect, rather than to vio- 
late principles. It sweeps away imagined power, 
which a multitude of circumstances had already shown 

to be only apparent and superficial : it exhibits power 
Where power evidently exists, and might be expected 
to be found. 

lint here, perhaps; I may be assailed with the oft- 
repeated question (to which I have once before allu- 
ded), w - Granting all this to be true, of what use are 
our external senses ? " 

Coleridge, impressed with an idea of the lavish 
wealth and boundless resources of Providence, when 
asked of what use were the stars and planets if not 
inhabited, replied, " I suppose to make dirt cheap." 
In the same manner I might answer when persons 
demand, " Of what use is the eye, if we can see 
without it ? " — " To show us how to make a camera 
obscura." In graver phrase, how much we learn 

28 



326 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

from the construction of this marvellous organ ; how 
dependent on that construction are all the discoveries 
which have been made respecting the physical pro- 
perties of the luminous medium ! It is a mechanism 
exquisitely adapted to the mechanical arrangements 
of the universe. And is its beauty nothing ? its 
power of speaking the soul ? And these advantages, 
be it remembered, are contingent upon the office, 
place, and station which the eye now holds in the 
human economy. But while we adore the Creator's 
wisdom and goodness in thus suiting our organs to 
our condition, and to the agents with which they are 
immediately in contact, let us remember that it is our 
duty to explore, and to seek out the true grounds of 
our adoration, and not to rest in a sort of stupid 
amazement. They who so triumphantly take their 
stand against mesmerism upon the all-importance of 
the external organs of sense, would do well if they 
would condescend to learn the real and most valuable 
part which they play in our economy. While it is 
the office of the nerves to receive and to transmit ex- 
ternal impulses with a degree of sensibility propor- 
tioned to their ever-varying condition, that of the 
external organs is to modify those impulses, with a 
regularity as constant as Nature's own. They are 
the weights and the balance-wheel in our constitu- 
tion. Thus the eye is composed of parts that are 
refractive, and of membranes that have each their 
use in altering light, such as it acts externally, into 
light such as it is perceived by us. The air. again, 
is modified in the mysterious labyrinths of the ear ; 
and these organs, by their form, contribute to direct 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 327 

the impulse thus modified to its proper recipient — 
the nerve. Hence it appears that the apparatuses of 
the senses are contrivances for blunting, not for height- 
ening, the sensibility. They are masks, and careful 
coverings to instruments of too exquisite delicacy to 
be bared and exposed to the outer world. The cutis 
defends the nerves from the agony of harsh impact 
upon their tender surfaces : the sieve-like mechan- 
ism el* smell disarms odor of its over-stimulus, ere we 

M Die of a rose in aromatic pain." l 

That degree of sensibility which is exhibited to us 
in the mesmeric stale, as if to give US a permitted 
glimpse of the capacities of our being, would be 
wholly unsuited to the purposes of every-day exist- 
ence and I cannot too often remind our opponents 

that man WHS no more created to pass his days in mes- 
meric sleepwaking than in any other state of abstrac- 
tion from the affairs of this world. How terrible 
would be the condition of a being laid bare and naked 
to the irritating influences of all external things, may 
be imagined from the Bufferings of persons whose 
nervous sensibility has become predominant over the 
mechanic action of the senses. The Seherih von 
Prevorst fell into horrible convulsions if iron were 
within a certain distance Of her. or if vinegar were 
in any part of her room. Even patients in the ordi- 

1 The choroid, by its dark coloring, absorbs the light, and miti- 
gates it to the eye, as is proved by the distressing effect which day- 
light produces on those persons called Albinos, who are deficient 
in the pigmentum nigrum. An ordinary degree of light dazzles 
them into blindness, and they can only see in twilight. 



328 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

nary mesmeric state are sensible, as I have shown, to 
emanations from precious stones, some of which affect 
them with very disagreeable feelings. The valuable 
experiments of Dr. Elliotson with minerals on mes- 
meric individuals speak to the same effect. Let it 
not, then, be thought that the mesmeriser underrates 
the uses of the external senses. That they are as 
valuable for modifying as the nerves are for receiving 
impulses he fully admits ; he is only desirous of ex- 
hibiting them in this their proper sphere, conceiving 
that he thus renders them service ; for a faculty is 
never seen to such advantage as when cleared from 
the rubbish which ignorance has heaped around it. 
The aggrandizement which is based on error is but 
for a time, and God is best honored where his work 
is best understood. 

Considerations favorable to mesmerism have now 
been drawn — 

1st. From the predominance of the nerves over the 
external organs of sense. 

2dly. From their degrees and variations of sensi- 
bility. 

3dly. From their capacities of development. 

And facts have been adduced which may prepare 
us to resolve the apparent paradox of sensation ex- 
isting apart from our usual senses. 

But the agency of the nerves is capable of still 
further elucidation which will throw yet more light 
on the mysteries of mesmeric sensibility. If from the 
varied modes of nervous action we proceed to its simple 
principle, we shall find abundant reason to conclude 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 329 

that mesmerism does never really infringe any estab- 
lished and universal law. 

As on the true nature of sensation I ground much 
that is explanatory of my subject, I must be excused 
if I endeavor to lead to the full comprehension of 
my future observations on that head by some pre- 
liminary remarks, which will not be deemed needless 
by those who appreciate the difficulties that surround 
this branch of our inquiry. 

There are evidently but two ways of perceiving 
objects ; — the one by being present to them in their 
essential verity ; the other by communication with 
them through the intervention of types or shadows. 

The first mode of perception belongs to God alone. 

The second is imposed on man by the necessities 
of his nature 

We cannot go to the object : the object must be 
conveyed to US. 

We cannot penetrate its essence : we must descry 
it as in a glass, darkly, — by reflection, — by an 
image which is not itself. 

For this reason, in some previous observations re- 
lative to this same subject, I likened sensation to a 
language established between man and his Creator. 
I now proceed to point out in what that language 
consists, and how truly it may be called a language, 
since its symbols no more resemble the ideas they 
excite, than do words the pictures they raise in the 
mind, or the printed sentences of a book the thoughts 
and feelings which they occasion in those who read 
them. 

Limited, and closed in by walls of flesh, with 
28* 



330 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

which, for a time, we are almost identified, we can- 
not but allow that through our body comes all that 
knowledge, appertaining to external things, to which 
we have given the name of sensation. This is indeed 
the tenure on which we hold our individual exist- 
ence ; for all intelligence that is not limited is God, 
and in the force of the restrictions which confine the 
creature (paradoxical as it may sound) consists the 
independence of its action, and the liberty of its 
will. The universal ideas, which originate with God, 
must, in order that they may become proper to our- 
selves, be transmitted to us through personal expe- 
rience, and be coloured by the tinge of our own 
nature. Deceived, indeed, when we think not deeply, 
by the apparent extremity of effects which we only 
experience in our own persons, we refer our feelings 
to the object that occasions them, and speak of sound 
or of color, as if it existed as a thing apart, forge t- 
ing that aerial vibrations are only sound where there 
is an ear to receive them, and that light is only 
color when it is reflected from surfaces to an eye 
that vibrates in unison with its rapid scintillations. 
Our free communication with external objects is 
another source of error to our minds. Borne on the 
wings of thought, we seem, as it were, to go out of 
ourselves — to annihilate distance — mock at separa- 
tion, and pervade the universe ; but maturer reflec- 
tion assures us that sensation does, in fact, never stir 
one inch beyond the corporeal boundaries which 
have been assigned to it. Close the ear, and silence 
is around us, though to others the brook is murmur- 
ing, or the trees are rustling as before : — shut the 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 331 

eye, and the slight veil of a tender membrane has 
blotted out all that glorious creation with which we 
so freely conversed. — has for us expunged the beau- 
ties of earth, the magnificence of ocean, and made a 
blank of the boundless heavens. Were we essentially 
cognizant of these objects, we could not be parted 
from them thus ; but it is evident that all our sentient 
mechanism (as Newton intimates) is truly constituted 
for the purpose of conveying the species of things to 
our sensorium, and that all that vast expansion to 
which we seem present is, in reality, present to us 
within the narrow compass of our brain. 

Sensation, then, is personal to ourselves, and man 
is strictly confined to his individual spline ; yet, at 
the same time, our consciousness assures us that we 
are in sensible communication with objects which 
are not ourselves, and which are more or less remote 
from us. Consequently, between us and them there 
must be media : and thus, in considering sensation, 
we have three things to take into the account; 
namelv. the external object, or the exciting cause; 
the medium whereby we are, as it were, linked to 
that object ; and the change in our own corporeal 
frame, which stands as the representative of the 
object. 

Hereafter I shall have occasion to speak of the 
media whereby we are brought into communication 
with the visible universe. At present I restrict my- 
self to considering the signs of things, of which our 
own persons are, as it were, the living alphabet and 
recording volume. 1 

1 Locke mentions " the perception of the signification of signs" 
as a chief act of the understanding. See his chapter on " Power." 



332 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

First, that we really do draw our sensations from 
the signs of things, and not from things themselves, 
a very simple and well-known experiment may con- 
vince us. 

Crossing the middle over the fore-finger, let any 
one rub between their extremities a little ball, and he 
will have exactly the same sensation as if there were 
two balls instead of one. 1 

This phenomenon is capable of but one explana- 
tion. Those parts of the fingers which, in the ex- 
periment, are brought into contiguity, are ordinarily 
prevented by their position from touching one object 
at the same moment. Simultaneous impact on them 
has therefore become associated by habit with an 
idea of a duplicate impression. The mind has learnt 
its lesson, which it cannot forget — its language, 
which it can only interpret in its own established 
manner. We touch a single superficies with nervous 
surfaces which are used to come in contact with two ; 
therefore we think that we touch two objects. The 
conventional signs are present, and we deem that the 
accustomed realities are also acting. 

An interesting fact, recently observed at Paris, may 
be adduced in confirmation of the above views. 

A celebrated surgeon, M. Blaudin, succeeded in 
making a new nose for a soldier named Eustache 
Gressan, who had lost that member from a sabre cut 

1 The reader is begged to remember that experiments like these 
are not presented as new, (as indeed, being appeals to experience, 
how can they be?) but as known proofs of known propositions, 
equally necessary to be repeated in a certain train of argument as 
the problems of Euclid in a course of mathematics. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 333 

at Waterloo, by means of skin cut away from the 
forehead of the patient. When Gressan has his eyes 
shut, if any one pricks with a pin the end of his new 
nose, asking him at the same time where he has been 
touched, he immediately lifts his hand to his fore- 
head, evidently referring the feeling to its old place, 
from association. This anecdote, which is taken from 
a thesis sustained before the faculty of medicine at 
Paris, by M. Chomette of Bordeaux, is extremely 
valuable, as showing decisively that sensation depends 
on the nerves and their associated actions, not on 
their particular localities. 

Certain signs, then, are really representatives to us 
of certain objects ; and of the nature of those signs 
we. from the above considerations, may partly judge. 
It is necessary, however, that on this subject our 
ideas should be perfectly clear and precise. 

Let us. then fore, inquire wherein, individually 
and generally, consists the language of sensation? 

Not in that which is commonly and vaguely called 
the action of the senses but in motions of those 
nerves which are the life and efficacy of the senses. 
For, let us consider, with Locke, that " all the ac- 
tions that we have anv notion of, reduce themselves 
to these two, thinking and motion," (thinking being 
the action of mind, as motion is of matter). Now 
that the nerves act in sensation no one will attempt 
to deny; and lion: they can act, being material sub- 
stances, except by a change in the position of their 
relative parts ; in other words, by motion, it is utterly 
impossible to conceive. 

That sensations are the results of changes or mo- 



334 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

tions in some portion of our nervous system does not, 
however, rest upon abstract reasoning alone. The 
proposition may be proved, by fact, in a twofold 
manner. 

First, we may, by giving motion to a nerve of 
sense, convince ourselves that a sensation is the 
result. 

Secondly, knowing that, when bodies are jarred or 
stirred, their particles continue for some little time 
in motion, after the impulse which set them vibrating 
is at rest ; we may, by observing that a sensation con- 
tinues for a few moments after its cause has ceased 
to act, conclude that the nerve, on which sensation 
depends, produces its effect by motion. 

Each of the senses is susceptible of affording either 
species of demonstration. 

First. 1 . A blow on the ears will make them what 
is vulgarly called ring, independently of the sound of 
the percussion. 

2. When a sound has been of long duration, we 
still conceive that we hear it, though it may have 
been for some time discontinued. 

Secondly. 1. An electric shock gives such sensa- 
tion to the nerves of touch as a violent blow usually 
excites in them. 

2. Should a fly have settled on the face, we often 
raise our hands to brush it off, after it is really gone, 
being deceived by a continuation of the same feeling 
which it gave us when actually in contact with the 
skin. The tickling of a feather produces a similar 
effect. 

Thirdly. 1. Let any one place a piece of zinc un- 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 335 

der his tongue, and a piece of silver upon the upper 
part of the same organ. At the moment when the 
two metals are brought into contact, a strong taste 
w r ill be perceived in the mouth, resulting from the 
galvanic concussion, and not from any actual flavor. 

2. The sensation endures for a short time after the 
experiment has been tried. 

Fourthly. 1. A spark, drawn, by means of pointed 
metal, from the nose of a person who is charged with 
electricity, will give him the sensation of smelling a 
phosphoric odor. 

2. Musk, however carefully inhaled, so as to pre- 
vent any actual particles of the substance from being 
stopped upon the pituitary membrane, will produce 
in us sensations of odor for some time after we have 
ceased to smell to it. 

Fifthly. To perceive the connection between mo- 
tion and sensation, with respect to such of our senses 
as I have already mentioned, is not difficult. But, 
when we come to consider the eye, it is hard to ap- 
prehend that all its beautiful representations of that 
external world with which it holds such distant com- 
munion are but signs and characters, consisting in 
nervous motions, which the soul, by an intellectual 
operation, translates into its own glorious and native 
language. For this reason, I have reserved the con- 
sideration of vision to the last, in order to bestow on 
it more attention. Mesmeric vision also being that 
part of mesmeric sleepwaking which most alarms the 
prejudices of mankind, I am most anxious to reduce 
it to analogy with nature. 

If it can be shown that vision does really consist, 



336 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

like all our other sensations., in motion communicated 
to a certain nerve, I conceive that my task is partly 
executed, since it is plain that, though other condi- 
tions which we deem essential to vision may be want- 
ing to the mesmeric state, the great, the primary 
requisite may yet be present. There may still be 
motion. 

But let us proceed to proofs. 

Sir Isaac Newton asks (Query 12th), 

" Do not the rays of light in falling upon the bot- 
tom of the eye excite vibrations in the tunica retina, 
— which vibrations being propagated along the solid 
fibres of the optic nerves into the brain, cause the 
sense of seeing ? " 

And again (Query 16th), 

" When a man in the dark presses either corner of 
his eye with his finger, and turns his eye away from 
his finger, he will see a circle of colors, like those in 
the feather of a peacock's tail. If the eye and the 
finger remain quiet, these colors vanish in a second 
minute of time ; but if the finger be moved with a 
quavering motion they appear again. Do not these 
colors arise from such motions excited in the bottom 
of the eye by the pressure and motion of the finger, 
as, at other times, are excited there by light, for caus- 
ing vision ? and do not the motions, once excited, 
continue about a second of time before they cease ? 
And when a man, by a stroke upon his eye, sees a 
flash of light, are not the like motions excited in the 
retina by the stroke ? And, when a coal of fire, 
moved nimbly in the circumference of a circle, makes 
the whole circumference appear like a circle of fire, 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 337 

is it not because the motions excited in the bottom 
of the eye by the rays of light are of a lasting na- 
ture, and ^continue till the coal of fire, in going round, 
returns to its former place ? And, considering the 
lastingness of the motions excited in the bottom of 
the eye by light, are they not of a vibratory nature ? " 
These observations, which the great philosopher has 
so modestly thrown into the interrogative form, mo- 
dern science has done little else than repeat affirma- 
tively. 

It is true, we no longer talk of rays of light as the 
causes of our visual sensations ; we have substituted 
for these (and, as I believe, with truth,) the undula- 
tions of an clastic ether. Still the theory of sensa- 
tion remains the same j and motions of the nerves, 
which minister to the eye, arc accepted as productive 
of our ideas of light The fibres of the retina, ac- 
cording to If. d'Arcet, continue to vibrate for about 
the eighth part of a second after the exciting cause 
has ceased : and therefore it is that, if we look at the 
sun and then turn our eyes from it, or even shut 
them, we still perceive a bright image before us. 
The phenomenon is explicable on no other hypoth- 
esis. 

I might, perhaps, allow the subject to rest here, 
but it is too important to be abandoned before our 
misapprehensions concerning it are perfectly cleared 
up. The great source of error respecting vision has 
been, and is, the miniature representation of objects 
on the retina, which was once undoubtingly accepted 
as the cause of vision — a venerable delusion, with 
which it is almost a pity to part ; for the endeavor 

29 



338 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

to explain how an inverted image (as that on the 
retina is,) could make men see right end upwards, 
has given rise to an infinite display of learned inge- 
nuity. 

Then, also, the notion of the soul giving a peep 
into the show-box of the eye is sufficiently ludicrous 
to be amusing. Still, before we can have just ideas 
concerning vision, those that anciently found place 
with us, however captivating, must be altogether 
swept away. The undulatory theory of light has, it 
is true, at the present time, already effected this in 
part : still, nothing is more difficult than to get well 
rid of old errors, especially when these are based on 
a plausible association of ideas. We behold external 
objects — the same objects are known to be repre- 
sented on the retina — and we jump at once to the 
conclusion that here is cause and there effect. Un- 
fortunately, never were two things, apparently con- 
nected, so wide asunder. Did not whatever is too 
near ourselves in general delude us greatly, surely 
we should not accept the image on the retina as ex- 
planatory of vision, only because that image is in the 
eye, and because we know that, in some way or other, 
our eyes serve us to see with. For let us remember 
that the connection between seeing and the picture 
on the retina has never been proved. The theory 
that links them together is perfectly gratuitous. On 
the other hand, the connection between seeing and 
motion of the optic nerve has been proved. We 
cannot indeed see without a retina; — but why ? 
Because the retina is so constituted as to be set in 
motion by the impact of light, and to communicate 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 339 

motion to the optic nerve. Error continues to be 
propagated by the loose phraseology employed upon 
this subject. What is the meaning of the word im- 
pression, when applied to visual action ? An impres- 
sion gives the idea of something stamped and dura- 
ble ; but the image on the retina endures no longer 
than while the external object is before it. This is 
totally at variance with the lasting nature of lumin- 
ous impulsions on the eye, which consideration, it 
might be supposed, would alone be sufficient at once 
to refer vision to a motive cause. Above all, how 
can the optic nerve convey impressions! — a mode of 
speech, however, which is but too common. What 
is really conveyed, or communicated to the brain ? — 
a stamped figure, like the impression of a seal on 
wax — or a picture ? — No ! a motion, and nothing 
but a motion. Notwithstanding that this is palpable 
to teason, and doubtless well known to the physiolo- 
gist, still it is to be suspected that the multitude are, 
even yet, misled by a fancied analogy between the 
act of seeing and taking off the impressions of ob- 
jects, just as ladies, by an ingenious and almost in- 
stantaneous process, transfer engravings to the tops 
of their work boxes. 

This must be reformed altogether. 

Taking the question on its widest grounds, let us 
inquire, Does the image on the retina enable us to 
see ? To see is not merely to have ideas of color, 
but to appreciate the relative size and distance of 
bodies. Now, in spite of the beautiful perfection of 
the forms represented upon the retina, and the pro- 
portion of their distances, many facts contribute to 



340 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

assure us that we gain no perception "bf form or dis- 
tance by the eye. We learn from it absolutely no 
more than relates to light and color. Thus, though 
images are formed upon the retina of the new-born 
infant as perfectly as upon that of the adult, yet, dur- 
ing the first month of its existence, it cannot be said 
properly to see. It only betokens a certain sensibil- 
ity to light by shutting its eyes when exposed to a 
strong glare. That it has actually no idea of the 
size or distance of objects, even long after it appears 
pleased with bright and lively colors, is evident from 
its stretching out its hand to seize objects, however 
distant, or of whatever dimensions. 

Even persons, who, being born blind, attain to 
sight at an advanced period of life, arrive but slowly 
at a correct appreciation of external objects. No 
where is the parallel between language of the pre- 
cedents of sensation more remarkable than here. 
Learning to see is precisely analogous to learning a 
new tongue. It is said of a blind youth, spoken of 
by Cheselden, " When he saw the light for the first 
time, he knew so little how to judge of distances 
that he believed the objects which he saw < touched 
his eyes,' (this was his expression) as the things which 
he felt touched his skin." ] It is related also of 
Kaspar Hauser, who was in the condition of a blind 
person from long captivity in a dark dungeon, that, 
when led up to a window, for the first time, whence 
there was an extensive view, he uttered a cry of pain 
and hid his eyes with his hands ; when able subse- 

1 Milligan's Magendie. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 341 

quently to describe his sensations, he declared that 
the landscape had appeared to him as an upright 
plane, daubed all over with dazzling and discordant 
colors. 1 

Were vision mechanically resultant from a pictured 
representation, it is evident that effects like these 
could not ensue. 

But, finally, how are we made aware that there is 
a picture at all on the retina ? By its being shown 
to us in the eye of a dead animal. So that we look 
upon it externally as we would on any other object. 
It is we ourselves who create the picture by our pre- 
vious conceptions of form and distance, which have 
been drawn, as the metaphysician knows, from the 
"sense of touch or rather muscular action. Thus, we 
only know that there is a picture on the retina, 6e- 
caute we are able to see. Can that, then, be itself 
the cause of our seeing? The absurdity is manifest. 
It is clear, then, that when we call upon the image 
on the retina to account for our visual perceptions, 
the effect does in no way answer to the cause pro- 
posed. View it as we will, it appears to be merely 
the collateral result of certain mechanical dispositions, 
which in no way regard it as an end. From what 
has been said, it appears that, in considering the 
sense of vision, we must absolutely look upon it as 
no more than the medium of our information respect- 
ing light and color. 

To light and color, then, we have to confine our 

1 Kaspar Hauser has been accused of deception ; but surely this 
trait of nature alone would suffice to prove the most essential fact 
in his story. 

29* 



342 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

attention and to limit our argument. But our per- 
ceptions of light have been proved to be occasioned 
by motions of the optic nerves, and colors consist so 
certainly in vibrations, that the number of undulations 
producing each tint of the solar spectrum has been 
mathematically ascertained. "• The determination of 
these minute portions of time and space," observes 
Mrs. Somerville, " both of which have a real exist- 
ence, being the actual results of measurement, do as 
much honor to the genius of Newton as that of the 
law of gravitation." 

Thus it appears that the real office of the retina is 
to vibrate in correspondence with the vibrations of 
light ; as they are modified by being turned, inter- 
cepted, or broken by meeting with various objects. 

Need we observe how much this diminishes the 
wonder of mesmeric vision ? It has been shown that 
the picture on the retina is not the cause of seeing. 
In cases, therefore, where a picture on the retina is 
rendered impossible (as when the eyes are closed in 
mesmeric slumber) the true cause of vision is not, it 
seems, on that account, put out of the way. There 
still may be motion of the optic nerve. If it be in- 
quired, how produced, I must send on my reader to 
the remarks which will shortly ensue on communica- 
ting media. This at least cannot be contested : — 
the faculty of vision has been proved to result from 
motion, and is therefore brought under the same law. 
which, it has been shown, predominates over the 
other senses. Hence it appears that few proposi- 
tions, not absolutely mathematical, are more certainly 
established than this. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 343 

Motions of the nerves are representative to man of 
external objects. Nor is it less demonstrable that 
those portions of the nervous system which are cen- 
tral, or proximate to the brain, occasion in us, by 
their motions, sensations, rather than those portions 
of the nervous system which are superficial or most 
remote from the brain. For, in many instances, it 
may be shown that internal causes, wholly indepen- 
dent of any thing external, produce sensations exactly 
similar to those excited by external things ; their 
manner of reproduction plainly exhibiting their ori- 
ginal mode of production. 

In fever there is a repetition of images before the 
eye, which can only l>e accounted for by supposing a 
repetition of the sensations which formerly suggested 
them. But those sensations are themselves correla- 
tive with certain changes or motions of the nervous 
system. Their recurrence in a confused and incohe- 
rent manner is confessedly the fruit of disorder. And 
what is disorder ? An agitation of the frame, occa- 
sioned often, and always accompanied by a deranged 
action of the nerves. The soul is reading as it were, 
an incoherent treatise, of which the disjointed sen- 
tences were once familiar to her in their proper 
order. 

Under the influence of strong emotion persons 
may perceive, as with the actual organs of sense, ob- 
jects which have no existence but in themselves ; nay, 
even like Macbeth, when marshalled by the air-drawn 
dagger, may stretch forth their hands to clutch 

" The false creation, 



Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." 



344 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

There are also mysterious affections of the nervous 
system, in which the patient, retaining all his reason, 
seems palpably to behold various forms of men or 
animals. Walter Scott, in his Demonology, gives a 
detailed and interesting account of the case of a 
lady who was thus spectre-haunted for months. 

I was myself personally acquainted with a physi- 
cian who told me that, one evening w r hile he w r as 
writing, he chanced to raise his eyes and saw, as he 
imagined, his housekeeper standing close to his desk, 
with a candle in her hand. " You may go to bed, 
Betty," he said, and went on writing. A few minutes 
afterwards he again looked up : there was Betty still. 
"Did you not hear me?" he repeated; "I want 
nothing more. Go to bed." A third glance, how- 
ever, showed him the seemingly obstinate Betty yet 
nearer to his chair, when, raising his hand with a 
gesture of impatience, he found that it passed through 
the figure, which, however retained all its apparent 
corporeality. With much shrewdness and presence 
of mind, the physician then felt his own pulse, which 
indicated fever. He proceeded forthwith to bleed 
himself, and, as he had anticipated, while the blood 
flowed, the phantom gradually disappeared — a proof 
the most convincing that it was the creation of his 
own disordered state of body. 

Nor are such illusions confined to the sense of 
vision. A lady of my acquaintance, while in a weak 
state of health, heard constantly a band of music 
with as much distinctness as if an orchestra had 
actually been present. As she recovered, the imagin- 
ary sounds diminished, till at length she heard no 
more of the aeriel performers. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 345 

These facts, however, are not within the experience 
of all persons. But a proof, as easy of access as it is 
interesting, that internal motions of the nerves can 
cause in us a perfect idea of something external to 
ourselves, is afforded in the following experiment. 
Let any one take a five shilling piece, and thrust it 
far up between the inside of his upper lip and his 
teeth : then let him lay a piece of zinc on his tongue, 
and suddenly bring together the edges of the two 
metals. At the moment when contact takes place a 
faint glimmering light will seem to pass off on either 
side his head, which, as nobody else sees it, must be 
an optical error, — the mere motion of a nerve, 
caused by the galvanism elicited from the two me- 
tals. 

Finally, discoveries <rf recent date demonstrate that 
the impulses of sense proceed to a point remote from 
the organ in which they originate. It is found that 
the optic, acoustic, and olfactory nerves, though rer 
maining entire, may fail to transmit their accustomed 
intelligence to the seat of perception, after the sever- 
ing of the fifth pair. The following experiment gives 
still more consequence to the internal action of our 
sensitive system. " I destroyed in a dog," says Mi- 
gendie, the two olfactory nerves. I presented to the 
animal strong odors. He perceived them perfectly, 
and conducted himself exactly as he would have 
done had he been in his ordinary state. It may 
then be possible that the olfactory nerve is not the 
nerve of smell." ' 

1 Milligan's Magendie. 



346 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

How much these facts throw light upon the inter- 
nal sensibility displayed by sleepwakers I need not 
remark. They tend to concentrate sensation, to 
refer it to a common source. They actually display 
our senses dependent for their action upon an inter- 
nal cause. 

But, farther still, it may be shown that a quiescent 
state of the external portions of the nerves is per- 
fectly consistent with an increased and independent 
activity of their central system. 

Nay, the repose of the outer is an absolute condi- 
tion for the revelation of the inner sensibility. 

We all may feel that, in order to call up before 
our mind's eye the face of a dear friend, or the 
beauties of a familiar landscape, we must retreat 
from the obtrusive impulses of the external world. 

Would we rise to a yet higher discernment of re- 
membered objects, we must yet more calmly check 
the beating of our pulses, until we pass into that state 
of mind so beautifully described by Wordsworth, — 

" That serene and blessed mood 



In which the affections gently lead us on, 
Until the breath of this corporeal frame, 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul : 
While, with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the light of things." 

An instance of another kind of abstraction is to be 
found in the visionary, who conceives that lie pos- 
sesses the power of really discerning absent objects, 
or of anticipating such dramas of life as have not 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 347 

yet been acted. These seers, or pretenders to the 
second sight as it is called, are described as falling at 
the time of their beholding a vision into a species of 
trance. Their limbs become rigid, their eyes remain 
fixed and are insensible to the light. While all 
within them is in a kind of anarchy, their exterior 
appearance is that of the dead. 

But we need not resort to an extreme case like 
this, to demonstrate that our greatest enjoyment of 
the inner mobility of sensation is to be found in the 
moment when we are most externally tranquil. 
Dreams, beyond all other phenomena of our nature, 
prove a central activity of the nervous system. 
When we have passed into their world of separate 
existence, the outer organs of sense are closely shut, 
yet we see, or hear, 1 or feel, or partake of imaginary 
banquets. To say that the soul alone reproduces 
these ideas, were to charge her with unworthy folly, 
for what can be less exalted or less coherent than are 
our sleeping visions generally ; yet, were the spirit 
really free to act unencumbered, would not her 
operations be distinguished by superior majesty and 
connection ? Rather must we affirm with him, whose 
every comment on our nature was poetically beauti- 
ful and philosophically true, — 

u Dreams are the children of an idle brain." 

It is indeed evident that, in sleep, some cause (per- 

1 Dr. Abercrombie doubts that a sense of hearing is ever enjoyed 
in slumber. It is, however, no uncommon occurrence with me to 
dream that I hear music, either vocal or instrumental, as distinct 
as any that voice or orchestra can produce. 



348 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

haps the circulation of the blood through the brain) 
agitates the nerves of sensation, and gives to our 
ideas, by their associate motions, a particular impulse, 
form, and feature. This view of the case is strength- 
ened by the manifest influence which our state of 
body exercises over our nocturnal visions, which are 
calm or disturbed, agreeable or painful, accordingly 
as our digestion, and consequent pulsation, is orderly 
or irregular. 

A surplus, then, of internal sensibility, coexistent 
with a deficiency in the external, is not exhibited in 
the mesmeric state alone. If, indeed, mesmerism 
could display an inner development of sensation, 
without any sacrifice of the external capacities, we 
might have reason to exclaim against its miraculous 
deviation from nature's laws ; but the increase of 
internal power, which it reveals, in connection with 
the abrogated activity of the surfaces of the nerves, 
appears to be the illustration, and not the infringe- 
ment of a principle. 

Still are we more and more depriving the super- 
ficial extremities of the nerves of potentiality in sen- 
sation, — still are we giving more and more im- 
portance to their central motions. Proceeding in 
our examination of nervous action, we find proof not 
wanting, that like impulses, at whatever part of the 
nerve they commence, terminate in like motions, and 
produce like sensations. 

" After the amputation of a foot, or a finger, it has 
frequently happened, that an injury being offered to 
the stump of the amputated limb, whether from cold 
air, too great pressure, or other accidents, the patient 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 349 

has complained of a sensation of pain in the foot or 
finger that was cut off." ' 

From this fact we may infer, that nerves have the 
same conducting capacity throughout their whole 
length, and that the loss of their extremities or ulte- 
rior expansions does not deprive them of their power 
to convey impulsions. 

The common property resident in any part of a 
nerve, or series of nerves, to excite similar sensations, 
is also evinced by the difficulty we often experience 
in referring our pains to the real seat of the disorder 
which occasions them. Thus it not unfrequently 
happens, that a person has had a sound tooth ex- 
tracted instead of a defective one which caused the 
torment. 

But all these phenomena of sensation are, as it 
were, subservient to one great principle, which, if 
laws be only the general expression of concurring 
facts, is most truly Nature's law as regards sensation ; 
universal — immutable — admitting of no exception. 
It is this : — similar ultimate motions of the nerves, 
however produced, excite similar sensations. 

A priori reasoning would alone suffice to convince 
us of this ; or rather it is self-evident, as an axiom, 
that, where a sign is representative of an object, it 
must be so universally and under all circumstances. 
It would produce as much confusion did that par- 
ticular sensation, which now invariably signifies to us 
a tree, occasionally call up in us the idea of a man, as 
interpreting vice to mean virtue, or meanness gene- 

1 Darwin's Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 35. 
30 



350 MESMEHIC SENSATION. 

rosity, does actually bring about, in some instances, 
in this our wicked world. God's works are charge- 
able with no such imperfections. It is true that the 
invariability of our sensations may occasionally lead 
us into momentary error (we rashly concluding that, 
where the accustomed sign is present, the phenom- 
enon which usually causes it is also at hand) ; but 
this is only the necessary accompaniment of a mighty 
benefit. The advantages are great and regular; 
the drawbacks from these advantages trifling and 
exceptional. That like signs are productive of like 
ideas, is a principle which is the groundwork of all 
our knowledge. Is it ever violated in mesmeric sen- 
sation ? Not within my experience. An interesting 
proof that Suggestion continues to be, under mes- 
merism, the law of our thoughts may be found in 
the fact, that sleepwakers, with closed eyes, when 
asked how they appear to themselves in a mirror, 
reply, a as if my eyes were open." Accustomed to 
connect the two ideas, of sight and having the eyes 
open, in one sequence, the first suggests the second 
to their minds. 

To prove by general experiment that ultimate 
motions of the nerves, however produced, are signs 
which the Mind interprets in one uniform manner, is 
but to repeat facts which have been already stated. 
The truth of the proposition is involved in that of 
preceding ones. For it has been shown that pres- 
sure, or a blow on the eye, or galvanic concussion, 
produces, not less than the vibrations of the luminous 
ether, a sensation of beholding light ; that smell, 
feeling, taste may be deceived into action by agents 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 351 

which are not the proper objects of those senses, and 
that hearing may result from any cause that sets 
the tympanum in motion or agitates the acoustic 
nerve. 

And that all these pulsations tend inward, and that 
the last nervous change is the immediate precedent 
of sensation, has been made also evident. 

Adopting Dr. Thomas Brown's definition of power, 
we may not inaptly call central action of the nerves 
the power of sensation. 

Wonderful and complex, then, as is the external 
mechanism of the senses, their principle is one. In 
vain will a thousand adverse arguments be based upon 
the favorite theme of our opponents — namely, the 
specialty of office with which each nerve in our 
economy is invested ; in vain will it be contended 
that one nerve is sensible to the touch of light alone 
— that another converses solely with the world of 
sound. But however varied their action may ap- . 
pear, however diversified the ideas which they excite, 
however distinct and separate the different properties 
of matter which they reveal — still, as many rays 
unite in one centre, or, rather, as a thousand har- 
monies may be all evolved from one fundamental 
note, so do their multiplied resources all coincide in 
a single simplicity of plan and operation. Motion 
is their language — motion is their mode of commu- 
nicating information to us from without. 

This is sensation's one great law, to which all other 
are minor and attribute ; and this, once established, 
deprives all but the last preparative of sensation of 
that constancy which is the attribute of power. All 



352 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

other laws relating to our sensibility admit of excep- 
tions, and are not therefore really laws. This alone, 
throughout the whole history of man, we have never 
found transgressed. And how beautiful, how won- 
derful is the contrivance ! A few insignificant signs, 
capable of infinite permutations, are representative 
to us of the whole glorious universe ! The finger of 
God is here. 

Having explored the principle of sensation, we 
find that the changes which mesmerism induces in its 
superficial developments are comparatively unimport- 
ant. They in no way affect the great internal cause, 
or throw the mesmeric sensibility out of the pale of 
nature. We have seen that similar motions of the 
nerves may be produced in various ways, and that a 
change in the pre-requisites of sensation can never 
imply a change in sensation itself. Now, though in 
the mesmeric state the nervous motions are appa- 
rently not produced in the normal way, still that there 
may be normal motions is evident. However altered 
by mesmerism the mere externals of sensation may 
appear, the internal efficient change in the nervous 
structure need not in any way falsify our habitual 
mode of being. In exposing the secrets and apparent 
mysteries of a new condition of man, we do but lay 
bare the fountain of sensation, not change its nature. 
We pierce beyond external developments only to 
arrive at their origin and their base more surely even 
than the anatomist with his scalpel. 

Let me, however, hasten to anticipate an objection 
which may be raised against the mode of argument 
that I have recently been pursuing. The feelings 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 353 

which I have adduced to prove that similar ultimate 
motions of the nerves are interrupted always by the 
mind in a similar manner, are, it may be urged, 
mere delusions, in no way correspondent to the truth 
of external things : whereas it has been set forth as 
the glory of mesmerism, that all its revelations regard 
realities : — that, without eyes, it beholds actual ob- 
jects of sight ; without ears, it appreciates aerial 
vibrations which do essentially exist. 

I answer, that my object was to show the uniform 
manner in which the sentient nerves perform their 
functions, and that, in order to judge of any func- 
tions aright, we must study them in their derange- 
ment. Even their errors point out the truth. Though 
the mind may be mistaken in its judgment, the nerves 
do not vary in their action ; and this was the great 
point to establish. In every ease, also, of delusive 
sensation, let it be remembered there still is a distinct 
perception of each several quality of the external 
world. Ideas of light, sound, odor, &c, have been 
perfectly reproduced, and have thus plainly indicated 
the manner of their original production. It has fully 
appeared that Nature's mode of conveying to us in- 
formation is one, and with this one the mesmeric per- 
ception need not be at variance. 

But is there, it may still be asked, any one ac- 
knowledged instance in nature, by which the possi- 
bility of receiving correct information respecting ac- 
tual existences, otherwise than by the usual inlets of 
sense, can be demonstrated ? There is. It is well 
known that sound may arrive in the tympanum by 
another way than the external ear. Let any one 
30* 



354 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

stop his ears with his hands as perfectly as he can, 
and hold his mouth open. Let a watch be introduced 
between his teeth, but without touching them, by 
another person. As long as there is no contact, he 
will not perceive the slightest sound of a watch tick- 
ing, but, the moment he closes his teeth upon the 
watch, he will hear it distinctly, — a manifest proof 
that the sound has reached him by the mouth, not 
by the ear, in fine by another mode of conduction 
than the ordinary. 

This simple and common experiment is extremely 
interesting and instructive, for it shows how impulses 
may arrive at the accustomed seat of sensation by 
novel ways ; warning us how rashly we should judge 
in deciding that, because the first preparatives of sen- 
sation are unusual, the last must be so likewise. 
They who desire the most to cling to experience in 
judging of mesmerism may by this consideration be 
propitiated. It may also be conjectured that an op- 
tical impulse may reach the retina by some new route, 
even as a certain sound was shown to have been 
transmitted to the tympanum. Should we agree with 
Magendie, as to the analogy between sight and hear- 
ing, 1 so far as to say, that " sound is to the hearing 



1 " Some experiments have lately taught me that the ear pre- 
sents physiological circumstances analogous to those of the eye." 

Again : " In the same manner as in the apparatus of vision, there 
are in that of hearing a number of organs, which appear to concur 
in that function by their physical properties, and behind them a 
nerve for the purpose of receiving and transmitting impressions." — 
Magendie *s Physiology. By Dr. E. Milligan. 

Herschel, also, in his Treatise on Sound, says, speaking of those 
feeble sounds which catch our attention at night : — " The analogy 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 355 

what light is to the sight," we shall be yet more dis- 
posed to admit this. 

It may, however, be asked, If in the state of mes- 
meric sleepwaking all the extremities of the nervous 
system be as dead, does not this form an insurmount- 
able barrier against the transmission of external im- 
pulses to the inner seat of sensibility ? By no means. 
In the first place, though the external sensibility of 
sleepwakers is not manifested in the accustomed lo- 
calities it does not follow that it exists not somewhere. 
The truth is, that it appears to be restricted and cir- 
cumscribed only to be increased in intensity. All 
mesmeric sleepwakers seem to possess a concentrated 
sensibility in some one part of their bodies, affording 
a free inlet for the conduction of external impulses 
to the nerves : nay. if we will, to the accustomed 
nerves of sensation. Objects of Bight (it will be re- 

membered) were transmitted to Mademoiselle M 

by the forehead. Sounds reached her by the same 
path ; for proof of which I refer to an experiment 
precisely analogous to the just mentioned one of 
bringing a watch into contact with the teeth. To 
the slightest touch upon the forehead, even while ap- 
parently dead to feeling elsewhere, she was peculiarly 
sensible. Ammonia held to her nose had no effect 
upon her, but, when brought before her forehead, 
made her suddenly draw back with affected respira- 
tion ; and, moreover, exhibit action in the muscles of 
the nose ; — which last circumstance more especially 

between sound and light is perfect in this, as in so many other re- 
spects, &c. The ear, like the eye, requires long and perfect repose 
to attain its utmost sensibility." 



356 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 



adds to the presumption that the external impact, in 
all mesmeric cases, though beginning at an unusual 
point, is finally transferred to the accustomed nerves 
of sensation. 

Again, even supposing all upward conduction from 
the extremities to the brain to be impossible in the 
mesmeric state, it by no means follows that there will 
be no sensation ; for many facts concur to show that 
the mind can act downward from the brain towards 
the extremities, and so, as it were, create sensation 
for itself. 

The mere thought of something sour will set the 
teeth on edge, or of a good dinner will excite action 
in the salivary glands, while feelings of awe or fear 
will affect the whole external surface of the body, so 
as to produce a visible change in the papillae of the 
skin. Mrs. Somerville has observed, in her Connex- 
ion of the Physical Sciences, that " the imagination 
has a powerful influence in our optical impressions, 
and has been known to revive the images of highly 
luminous objects, months, and even years after- 
wards." 

Again, Sterne says, in his odd book, the Koran, — 
" I am in possession of a faculty, at any time I please, 
of communicating a sensible pleasure to myself, with- 
out action, idea, or reflection, by simple volition mere- 
ly. The sensation is, in a degree, between feeling 
and titillation, and resembles the thrilling which per- 
meates the joints of the body upon stretching and 
yawning." 

Even the motions of the iris of the eye, which 
are strictly subject to nervous influence, and vppor 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 357 

rently dependent upon the external impulsion of light, 
have been proved by Magendie to be greatly under 
the dominion of the will. He says — "I ascertained 
this in the following manner : — I selected a person, 
whose pupil was very movable, for there exist great 
differences in this respect. I placed one sheet of 
paper in a fixed position with regard to the eye and 
the light, and, ascertaining the state of the pupil, I 
requested the person to endeavor without moving his 
head or eyes, to read the small characters which were 
traced upon the paper. Instantly I saw the pupil 
contract, and its constriction continue during the 
whole effort." ' 

Lastly, my own personal experience has convinced 
me that the mind can act from within towards the 
external organs erf sense. Often I have gone to sleep 
holding a book in my hand and continuing to hold it. 
For a few seconds after awaking, I could distinctly 
perceive that 1 was unaware of having any thing in 
my hand, and I have marked the restoration of feel- 
ing consequent upon the restoration of perfect thought. 
My mind has, as it were, proceeded again to the ex- 
tremities, from which, during slumber, it had re- 
treated. 

By these phenomena we establish a truth which 
all analogy might have suggested to us. The senses 
act on the mind. Granted ; but action supposes re- 
action. Reason and fact therefore both concur in 
proving that the mind has a certain mastery over the 
senses, even as it has over the limbs, though the ap- 

1 Milligan's Magendie, p. 43. 



358 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

*. 

parent passivity of the senses have so far deceived 
many, even acute, physiologists, as to lead them to 
assert, that, while the nerves of motion have a down- 
ward action, proceeding from the brain, the nerves of 
sensation, on the contrary, act invariably upwards, or 
towards the brain. We have, however, seen that 
this is a fallacy. It may, indeed, be made a question 
whether the mind can ever be said to be purely pas- 
sive in any true and philosophical sense. This at 
least is clear — it can only know that it has been pas- 
sive, by an act. Moreover, that only in as far as we 
attend to nervous motions we become sensible of them 
is a positive law of our being. Many an object sends 
visual beams to the retina, which yet we cannot be 
said properly to see — many an aerial vibration 
strikes on the tympanum, which yet excites in us no 
idea of sound. How often, for instance, a clock may 
strike and we not hear it ! The power that we pos- 
sess, also, of selecting particular objects for our notice, 
and even of excluding others from any share in our 
attention, proves that the mind does really — in some 
cases at least — turn the senses to a higher kind of 
service than a mere passivity implies. In looking on 
a landscape, when we are attentive to one pleasing 
portion of it, how all the rest of the view dies away, 
as it were, from the sight ! How easily from the 
conversation of a crowd of persons talking around us 
we can select that information which we most desire 
to hear ! Again, the cultivation of our senses is man- 
ifestly dependent on a power which is not their own. 
Children, till they have learnt to use their eyes and 
ears, give but feeble tokens that they possess them ; 



Mesmeric sensation. 359 

a proof that the mind does not even attend to signs, 
of which it comprehends not the significance and 
that neither external impulses nor material organs 
can produce sensation, without the active cooperation 
of the intellect. 

These remarks are of importance to mesmerism — 
a state in which the mind displays more of its active 
than its passive character — casting aside, as it were, 
the external organs of sense, in order to attend to its 
own abstracted trains of thought. 

Is nature violated or not by this development of 
internal power ? 

We have followed sensation inward only to arrive 
at the mind itself, and to exhibit it as not the play- 
thing of the senses, but their lord and master. 

Is this a truth which is new to us? If so, it is 
well that we should learo it now. It is time that we 
who talk of the march of intellect at the present day 
should rise above the vulgar view of sensation, and, 
as Coleridge phrases it, endeavor " to create the 
senses out of the mind, and not the mind out of the 
senses." Let us no more return to gone-by errors. 
Anciently courage was seated in the heart, sorrow in 
the spleen, love in the liver, &c. ; yet this was not 
worse than deeming sensation to be actually in the 
organs of sense. We may as well say that modesty 
is inherent in the cheeks, because they blush. Again, 
when smell is lost through the absence of its external 
organ — when hearing is impaired by a collapse of 
the external ear — when a person is near-sighted 
from convexity of the cornea, art can supply a false 
nose whereby odorous impulses are again properly 



360 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

gathered and perceived — can concentrate in an ear- 
trumpet the vibrations of the air — can, by proper 
glasses, restore the purblind to perfect vision. Are 
we, on that account, to say that sensation is seated in 
our false nose, artificial ear, or spectacles ? What 
better reason have we to suppose that any external 
apparatus of sense can actually create ideas in the 
soul ? 

A higher philosophy must teach us that the senses 
are but the instruments — the mind the power — of 
knowledge. The development, indeed, of its im- 
mortal stores may depend upon some external touch, 
which unlocks the treasures of the casket, and one 
by one exposes them to the light ; but, as a seed 
includes potentially the future plant, leaf, blossom, 
and fruit, so does the mind contain within itself its 
own capacities of expansion. Even granting that, 
till written upon by the finger of the universe, it is a 
blank, and that all the magnificent endowments 
which it displays are, until called into action and 
educated by external existences, as though they were 
not, still, when once vivified and instructed, it is able 
to act for itself, and to use its material organs as 
instruments of its intelligence and will. Till we 
recognize this truth in perfect clearness, there will 
be confusion even in our physiological researches. 
Before, also, we can study sensation aright, we must 
learn to separate it logically into its two great divi- 
sions of general and special — the first relating to 
us when considered as sentient beings only ; the 
second relating to us, when considered as sentient be- 
ings fitted and adapted to a peculiar state of ex- 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 361 

istence and to the mechanical arrangements of this 
our world. The first is fundamental, the second 
occasional ; the first is a principle, the second the 
modification of a principle. Our present organiza- 
tion has reference to our present condition ; but sen- 
sation is of no time — of no era : it is as old as 
creation itself. Now mesmerism tends to expose to 
us the fundamental sensation apart from the organic. 
Unless, then, uc can approach it with a due know- 
ledge of thi< distinction, its revelations will be spread 
before us in vain : they will darken rather than illu- 
minate our understandings. Till we thus study man 
and mesmerism (which is almost another word for 
man) we shall remain far behind the German school, 
both of metaphysicians and of physiologists. But un- 
fortunately we incline to the philosophy of a lighter 
nation, who have anatomized the body till they see 
nothing beyond the play and spring of nerve and 
muscle. With their accuracy of material examina- 
tion I do not quarrel ; I will, if they please. give up 
the term no///, which seems to offend them so mighti- 
ly : but 1 will, even from themselves, force the con- 
fession that man thinks; and whoever does not see 
dearly that thinking has no likeness or relation what- 
ever to any material operation, is in no condition to 
judge any subject, or to argue on any point what- 
ever. There is a radical delect and confusion in his 
mind, or (if he prefer so to phrase it) in his brain. 
These remarks are not uncalled for, because it is to 
be suspected that one of the sins, of which mes- 
merism is guilty, is that of giving preponderance to 
mind over matter, and of rescuing sensation from 
31 



362 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

its connection with certain organs with which some 
persons would absolutely and inextricably identify it- 
Can it be denied that too many physiologists love 
to view man as only a result of various organs ? It 
has even been affirmed by those who would make us 
wholly dependent on our material organization, that 
the loss of an external sense involves the loss of 
ideas, which have been furnished by that sense- 
Nothing can be more absurd or untrue* I have 
questioned on this very point many individuals, who 
had lost their sight for years, and they have all con- 
curred in saying that in dreams they had a lively 
sense of vision. 

Milton's beautiful sonnet, beginning — 

" Methought I saw my late-espoused saint/" 

and ending — 

" But oh f as to embrace me she inclined, 
I woke — she fled — and day brought back my night/' 

is a written record that sensation survives the sense 
to which it formerly was indebted. Beethoven, it is 
well known, became perfectly deaf at the age of 
twenty-eight, and thenceforth his whole world of 
wondrous harmony was seated in his mind. A cele- 
brated living artist is blind of one eye. According 
to the theory of some persons he should be only half 
an artist ; but his works are remarkable for correct- 
ness of design, and splendor of coloring. These 
are facts which are in harmony with mesmerism. Let 
not, then, the determined materialist quarrel with 
this infant science, as if it alone proclaimed the su- 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 363 

premacy of mind over matter. Even should it go to 
prove that we can see without our eyes, there is no 
such great cause for alarm. Metaphysicians have 
told us again and again that we do not see with our 
eyes, but with our understandings, — and the world 
is not yet come to an end. 

Let us now, by the aid of the principles we have 
ascertained, combine into one view the peculiarities, 
and the correspondences with nature, of the mes- 
meric mode of sensation ; pointing out where it agrees 
with and where it differs from the proceeds of our 
experience. 

I have already likened the nerves to conductors : 
the expression is perfectly correct. Setting wholly 
aside any theory as to their being the vehicles of a 
more efficient force, as the electric, (which, neverthe- 
less, certain phenomena of muscular motion render 
extremely probable), it is only a fact that they are 
conductors of impulses from tfie external world to the 
brain, and thence again to the mind ; and also, as has 
been proved, from the mind and brain reversely to 
the surfaces of the body. Again, it is a fact that 
their faculty of conduction varies in many ways, 
without any discoverable change in their texture and 
substance, or even in the external circumstances by 
which they are surrounded, though, from analogy, we 
may infer that their alteration does really depend on 
causes extraneous to themselves. 

Viewing the nerves in a mechanical light, we ac- 
tually find that, like other substances, they have their 
own class of influences, which affect their transmissive 
power. In some cruel experiments tried upon half- 



364 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

dead animals, alcohol applied to the brain was found 
to produce action in the nervous system after every 
other stimulus failed of this effect ; and salt placed 
upon the limbs of frogs, long after they have been 
severed from the body, will rouse them into life-like 
motion. Even such mechanical properties as these, 
inherent in the nerves, prepare us to expect varied 
effects from submitting them to various conditions. 
Here, however, our knowledge is so imperfect, that it 
is safer to study nervous action as it is connected with 
our own thoughts and feelings : the causes are, indeed, 
less obvious, but the phenomena more familiar to our 
experience. We are not acquainted, and probably 
never shall be, with the conditions by which nervous 
conduction is varied. That it does vary, we, how- 
ever, certainly know. 

In the normal state we have the extreme and cen- 
tral parts of the nervous system both in full activity. 

In sleep, the nervous capacities die off towards the 
centre, and the extremities are in no condition to 
transmit sensation. 

In palsy, conduction from the centre to the extre- 
mities is impeded, for the brain can no longer trans- 
mit the impulses of the will to the limbs. 

Nervous deafness, or blindness, afford instances of 
non-conduction from the extremities to the centre, 
occurring often without any apparent cause. I have 
a friend, who used frequently to be afflicted with a 
complete, though temporary blindness. At first, he 
said, it was as if a black spot were before him, blot- 
ting out external objects. This black spot increased 
till it obscured every thing, and he was in perfect 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 365 

darkness. I once was forced to lead him out of a 
concert-room at Cambridge, while he had an attack 
of this kind. 

In certain cases of catalepsy, the power of nervous 
conduction seems to be limited to one particular spot 
in the body. A lady, whose daughter was afflicted 
with cataleptic tits, in which she would sometimes fall 
down, at others be fixed rigidly in one attitude, told 
me that the patient heard nothing that was said to 
her in her attacks, unless the person speaking touched 
the pit of her stomach, and addressed the sound 
thither. On one occasion the child was seized with 
catalepsy when standing in the middle of a large 
public swimming bath, which, for her health's sake, 
she was ordered to use. 'The mother, unable to reach 
her child, was in great alarm lest she should fall, and 
called out. in hopes to wake her from the lethargy, 
in vain : she gave no token of hearing. The thought 
then suddenly occurred to the mother to hold her 
mouth close to the surface of the water, using it as a 
sort of conductor to convey the sound to the patient. 
On this being done, the little girl showed at once that 
the voice had reached her, and was roused from her 
catalepsy, as she usually was on her attention being 
strongly excited in attacks of that malady. 

It being then ascertained that nerves vary in their 
capacity of conduction, we have only to mention pre- 
cisely what shade of their conducting power charac- 
terizes the mesmeric state, when it will be found, I 
imagine, that we have not, in considering this part of 
man's constitution, to unlearn our previous know- 
31* 



366 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

ledge, bat merely to intensify known conditions, or to 
combine them anew. 

First. Under mesmerism, the nerves generally have 
ceased to conduct from the superficies to the centre ; 
— in other words, from the usual inlets of sensation 
towards the brain ; but it also appears that conduc- 
tion usually takes place from some one limited portion 
of the nervous surfaces, whence it propagates external 
impulsions by unusual routes, to the brain. 

The first branch of the phenomenon is partially 
exhibited in cases of nervous deafness, or blindness. 
The second, namely, the limited conduction of sen- 
tient impulses, has sometimes been observed in cata- 
lepsy. It has, however, been objected that in cases 
where the nervous sensibility has been reported to be 
confined to the epigastrium or pit of the stomach, the 
communication between this part and the brain has 
not sufficiently been accounted for, the system of the 
ganglions, as some persons affirm, scarcely making a 
part of the general nervous system. This is but a 
feeble objection. Every part of the system of man 
is evidently in reciprocal connection ; and if it be 
asked how the great sympathetic communicates with 
the nerves of sensation, we may answer this question 
in resolving another. How does the arterial commu- 
nicate with the venous system ? By vessels so fine as 
to have called their very existence into doubt, and to 
have rendered the circulation of the blood a great 
discovery. Our senses are not always so subtle as to 
trace nature in all her links. 

The second peculiarity of nervous conduction 
which the mesmeric state presents, is as follows : — 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 367 

In using, for the purposes of sensation, that portion 
of the nervous system to which conduction seems 
confined, the sleepwaker demonstrates more of the 
active than passive character of the mind. To speak 
technically, there is more manifestly conduction from 
the brain outwards than from the superficies inwards. 
The common process of sensation seems reversed ; 
for the nerve appears to conduct the sentient power 
to the superficies, where it takes, as it were, the in- 
formation it seeks, instead of, as usual, conducting 
the impulsion to the brain, where the sentient power 
may receive notice of what is passing in the external 
world. More briefly, in the one case the mind takes, 
in the other it receives information. 

I ground my observation on certain facts, and on 
this especially : — A mesmeric sleeprfmker rarely ob- 
serves any external object of his own accord. His 
state i- one of concentration, abstraction, and internal 
thought. If he be conversant with material objects, 
it is in the mirror of his own mind. Only when the 
mesmeriser stimulates his volition does he attend to 
any external thing, and then it is by seeming to 
apply, as it were, his new organ of perception to the 
object, with something of visible effort. If I may be 
permitted the illustration, I should say that he seems 
to feel out the object, as an insect examines things 
by putting forth its antennae and using them as instru- 
ments of exploration. 

This is more especially observable in the early 
stages of the mesmeric state, beyond which some 
persons never advance. There is also a difference 
which results from native character, some manifest- 



368 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

ing from the firsts some acquiring by degrees, a greater 
power of independent action than others, — a power 
less evidently derived from the mesmeriser. When 
this is the case, there is more attention manifested 
towards external things, but always, I imagine, in the 
manner that I have above indicated ; namely, by ac- 
tive exercise of the new organ of sense rather than 
by passive reception of impulsions through it. 

Some, who exhibit a very extended perception in 
the mesmeric state, seem to possess, to a certain de- 
gree, the faculty of shifting the external sensibility of 
the nervous system, though it continues always re- 
stricted, from one spot to another, changing, as it 
were, the site of their single organ of sensation. 
Thus E. A., who perceived things by the forehead, 
would occasionally receive information relative to ex- 
ternal objects by the back of his head, the side, or 
the top ; but he seldom did this spontaneously, and 
would always say it was a great effort and did him 
harm. And, in effect, after having induced him to 
make many such efforts, I always observed that he, 
on awaking, manifested uneasiness and fatigue. 

Other considerations support my view of the case. 
The mesmeriser can, by stimulating the patient's 
volition, restore the sense of feeling (but, I believe, 
that sense alone,) momentarily to the extremities of 

the nervous system. Thus, Anna M , when 

mesmerised, felt nothing if pinched in the hand by 
an indifferent person ; but if I told her to attend 
and try to feel, she could transiently perceive that 
she was touched. This proves that the mind of the 
patient can proceed from its inner abstraction for a 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 369 

moment to the extremities of the nervous system, 
and reoccupy its accustomed channels. Take this 
in conjunction with other facts, which demonstrate 
that conduction towards the brain is barred, and I 
think our point is proved. E. A. being mesmerised 
(as will be remembered) at a time when he was suf- 
fering from hunger, was no longer conscious of the 
sensation from the time of his entering the mesmeric 

state. Again, Anna M , Buffering, when awake, 

from a gathering in her linger, had no longer a sense 
of pain when in the mesmeric slumber. In these 
cases, the nerves of feeling, whether internal or ex- 
ternal, did evidently no longer convey impulsions 
towards the brain, but were as inefficient for that 
purpose afl if they had been tied <>r cut. The reader 
may also consult, fur further information on this sub- 
ject, the Monthly Chronicle for July. 1838, wherein 

a most interesting experiment on mesmeric insensi- 
bility is detailed. J)v tin- it appears that a galvanic 
shock, which produced a very severe effect on Sir 
William Molesworth and other persons, had no visi- 
ble influence on Elizabeth and Jane Okey, patients 
of Dr. Elliotson. Vet were these girls able to attend 
to all that was passing on every side of them ; or, in 
other words, to use their nervous system actively, 
while incapable of being influenced 1>\ it passively. 
There was no conduction towards the brain, but only 
from it. 

Again, in the case of Mile. Estelle PH , re- 
lated by Dr. Despines, of Aix, and once before refer- 
red to. it is stated that when she was unable, from 
a species of nervous paralysis, to stir a limb, she 



370 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

could, in the mesmeric condition, into which she 
sometimes spontaneously fell, actively use all her 
members as when in perfect health. The transition 
from a state of active exertion to one of passive help- 
lessness was very marked, and often very alarming ; 
since if her natural mesmerism dissipated itself, (as 
sometimes would occur) when she was walking, or 
even riding, she would fall suddenly, and, if not 
timely assisted, come with force to the ground. 

Some of these phenomena are by no means pecu- 
liar to mesmerism. The partial restoration to feeling 
effected through stimulation of the patient's will is 
paralleled by those cases in which nerves under the 
influence of strong excitement have been suddenly 
restored, after years of inaction, to a conducting ca- 
pacity. Paralytic patients, it is well known, have 
recovered the use of their limbs for a short time, 
when they were forced to save themselves from fire 
or other threatened evils, but, the excitement with- 
drawn, have fallen helpless to the earth : even those 
who had been dumb for years have spoken under 
circumstances where strong emotion burst their bonds 
of speech. Nor are these the only cases to which 
mesmeric sensation bears analogy. 

The inversion of nervous action has been pointed 
out by Darwin, and particularly described in his chap- 
ter on Reverie in the Zoonomia. A young lady, it is 
there related, suffering under this singular malady, 
neither saw, heard, nor felt, during its attacks, any of 
the surrounding objects ; yet did she manifest occa- 
sionally in her state of reverie a perception of exter- 
nal things (as when smelling a tuberose and drinking 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 371 

a dish of tea), "but this ivas only when she voluntarily 
seemed to attend to them." 

Darwin, remarking on the case, observes : — 
" In the present history the strongest stimuli were 
not perceived, except when the faculty of volition was 
exerted on the organ of sense ; and then even com- 
mon stimuli were sometimes perceived ; for her mind 
was so strenuously employed in pursuing its own trains 
of voluntary or sensitive ideas, that no common stim- 
uli could so far excite her attention as to disunite 
them ; that is, the quantity of volition, or of sensation 
already existing was greater than any which could 
be produced in consequence of common degrees of 
stimulation." 

Darwin has well stated this : and this appears to 
be the history of the sensations in all cases of sleep- 
waking and states which arc analogical to sleep- 
waking. The mind is deeply occupied on its own 
train of thought, so as to become inattentive to every 
thing in which it does not sympathize, and with 
which it does not cooperate. It is exhibited in the 
position of originating action; and every action which 
it does not itself originate is to it as a nullity ; as, 
for instance, the natural sleepwaker will be uncon- 
scious of the presence of other persons, and will 
sutler much from them without awaking; yet will he 
exert — yes, here it may be truly said exert — his 
percipient power on such objects as he pleases ; thus 
manifestly exhibiting a freedom of choice and a ca- 
pacity of selection which does not belong to man 
generally. Thus, however paradoxical it may ap- 
pear, the state from which volition seems the most 
absent, is really the fullest of free-will. 



372 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

These things throw light on mesmerism, and ap- 
proximate it to experience. They are known to be 
parts of the constitution of man ; they are demon- 
strated to resemble perfectly the state which we deem 
so anomalous. How comes it that the likeness has 
not been recognized before, — that mesmerism, in 
truth, so old, should seem so new — so near, should 
seem so distant ? The fault has been in this : — 
viewing mesmerism as a strange thing, men have 
sought strange solutions for it. Deserting the sure 
path of common life, they have thought themselves 
obliged by the dignity of their subject not to be too 
explicit in their explanations, but to wrap the ap- 
parent mystery in tenfold darkness. As Arago has 
well observed, in his life of James Watt, " Les forces 
naturelles ou artificielles, avant de devenir vraiment 
utiles aux hommes, ont presque toujours ete ex- 
ploiters au profit de la superstition." So have we 
been taught to view with superstitious fear the 
home-born stranger of our own bosoms. Thus has 
every effort to approximate it to man thrown it far- 
ther off. They who chase it most will find it least. 
To go far for it is like hunting for happiness — 

" Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, 
O'erlook'd, seen doable, by the fool and wise.'' 

The very terms heretofore in use, in speaking of 
mesmeric phenomena, have been strange and por- 
tentous. This is an error. We have undoubtedly 
startling things to relate ; let them not be related in 
startling language ! Words have much power for 
good and for evil. On this account I regret that the 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 373 

term " transposition of the senses " should ever have 
been applied to mesmeric perception ; for it is a 
manifest inaccuracy. The senses, as I trust I have 
demonstrated, are never by mesmerism transposed 
or removed from their real seat. Still more unfor- 
tunate is it that the early mesmerists should have 
sinned against precision of language, so far as to talk 
of their patients seeing with the epigastrium — the 
fingers, <fcc. To those who might inadvertently re- 
peal such an error, we might suggest that, when we 
are made to hear the ticking of a watch by means of 
its contact with the teeth, it would be a rash conclu- 
sion that we hear with our teeth. Such expressions 
m these remote mesmerism farther and farther from 
the safe regions of experience. Our object should 

be I -ver to show that it does not alter sensation, save 
in certain Comparatively unimportant particulars of 

it^ mode of conduction. Hut such stumbling blocks 

as these are fast being removed out of the way of 
objectors, so as to leave them no excuse for hanging 
doubts on words and arguments on verbal inaccu- 
racies. Already the obnoxious term magnetism has 
given way to the unobjectionable name which is 
well derived from the discoverer or reviver of the 
agency in question. Once the whole learned world 
fastened furiously on the word fluid, unfortunately 
applied to this agency. This can occur no more; 
for, through the excellent judgment of Dr. Elliotson, 
mesmerisers themselves agree in exposing the ab- 
surdity of deciding positively on the nature of mes- 
meric influence. 

But there still remains a stronghold to those who 
32 



374 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

think that to attack a name is to quash a fact. 
" What ! " exclaim some persons, " do you assert 
that any one can see with the eyes shut ? n By no 
means. We will change the term. Why quarrel 
about a word ? We will couch the fact of mesmeric 
perception in any language that is most agreeable to 
the objector ; we will allow that to have certain per- 
ceptions otherwise than by the eye is not properly to 
see. Let us say, then, that it is to perceive or ~know ; 
for knowledge, at any rate, is the end and object of 
all the senses. Knowledge is a general expression of 
the nature of man. But, be this as it may, the no- 
menclature of mesmerism, however faulty, evidently 
makes no difference whatever in the facts. It is with 
these we have to deal, and — unless we actually de- 
sire to quibble — it is these we must alone consider. 
But the advocates of mesmerism are placed in a sin- 
gular dilemma. The world calls out for facts ; and, 
when we offer such as we alone have to offer, hurls 
them back in our teeth. The mesmeric vision, or 
clair-voijance, especially has been gravely and grandly 
pronounced to be " physically and physiologically 
impossible." How can we reply to this ? Only, I 
suppose, as Pascal did to some one who asserted that 
it was impossible for God, being so great, to busy 
himself about our little world, — " II faut etre bien 
grand d'en juger." — " To decide such a question, 
one must be great indeed ! " Or again (for there is 
no lack of answers), " Must every thing be impos- 
sible, which our insufficience cannot account for? 
Are there not innumerable mysteries in nature, which 
accident reveals, or experimental philosophy demon- 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 375 

strates to us every day ? And shall we yet presume 
to limit the powers of the great Author of that very 
nature ? " 

But should we still be met with the same weari- 
some assertion, so as to be provoked out of all phi- 
losophical endurance, we may, perhaps, at last be al- 
lowed to exclaim with Young — 

; - Impossible is nowhere to be found, 
Except, perhaps, in the fool's calendar." 

Did these positive persons know all the offices and 
functions of the nerves, they might be thus dogmatic. 
But the study of the nervous capacities is itself of 
recent date, and the powers of nervous development 
are unknown. That tin 1 nerves do not always act in 
concert with the external organs — that they tran- 
scend them — that they can occasionally altogether 

dispense with their aid. has been proved. What if 

it were reserved for mesmerism to show the nerves 
not only acting alone, but acting in correspondence 
with external things? Is this a reason for rejecting 
an evidence precious in itself — the more precious 
from its novelty and rarity ? A new science must be 
based on new facts. Were all phenomena alike in 
the world, knowledge must come to an end, and in- 
vestigation be circumscribed indeed. Surely, all that 
is required to render any class of facts interesting is, 
that they should be new, yet not out of analogy with 
nature ; and those we have been considering come 
under both these conditions. Even though they 
should stand alone as a class, yet, having been shown 
to be uncontradicted by nature's general tendencies, 
they should be admitted to examination. Yet here 



376 MESMERIC SENSATION. 

again, though demanding but justice, we are baulked. 
We entreat the adversaries of mesmerism to come 
and witness our facts. They come not ; or, if they 
come, scarcely deign to look at the most important 
and interesting phenomena ; or again try experiments, 
not with a rigor, but with an unfairness unknown 
in other inquiries, expecting the sensitive being we 
exhibit to them to act as so much brute matter, 
and to be in the right when their sensibility is ex- 
hausted. 

" But/' piteously exclaim the systematic men, " if 
mesmerism be true, then all we have hitherto learned 
is false." By no means. But even were this so, 
surely it is better to get into the right path late than 
never. It is better also gracefully to yield than to 
be held up as a spectacle of vanquished yet imper- 
tinent obstinacy. And light — resistless light is pour- 
ing in on every side to illustrate nature, and to dis- 
play mesmerism in the first rank of acknowledged 
truths. 

It requires but little sagacity to perceive that they 
who now place mesmerism in the category of impos- 
sibilities will shortly be in the situation so well de- 
scribed in the following lines : — 

tl So fares the system-building sage, 
Who, plodding on from youth to age, 
Has proved all other reasoners fools, 
And bound all nature by his rules ; 
So fares he in that dreadful hour, 
When injured Truth exerts her power 
Some new phenomenon to raise, 
Which, bursting on his frighted gaze, 
From its proud summit to the ground, 
Proves the whole edifice unsound." Beattie. 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 377 



SECTION IV. 

ON THE MEDIUM OF MESMERIC SENSATION. 

Having shown, from the real nature of the changes 
in man's personal frame which precede sensation, 
that an inner sensibility, coincident with an inaction 
in external organs of sense, is but accordant with the 
principles of true physiology, I now purpose briefly 
to consider the pre-requisites of sensation, which are 
external to ourselves ; the media namely, which place 
us in communication with foreign and distant objects ; 
and I trust here also to demonstrate that mesmerism, 
instead of violating laws, does in fact bring us to 
grounds and principles. 

Should the problem be given us to solve of con- 
veying to a being, limited in perception and place, 
knowledge from a distance — how should we accom- 
plish the desired end ? 

By contact, certainly, and motion. 

We will imagine a person, deaf and dumb, placed 
at a distance from us, with his back towards us. He 
has been taught to distinguish, like the pupils in the 
Abbe Picard's institution at Paris, words written on 
the back. We are too far off to write these with the 
finger — we take a stick and write ; and the person, 
though distant from us, understands what we mean 
as well as if our thoughts were actually present to 

32* 



378 THE MEDIUM OF 

himself. Here a certain motion and configuration 
convey from our own mind intelligence of what is 
there existing to the mind of another, through the 
intervention of a moving medium. 

So God's intention is manifestly to convey to us 
certain ideas from his own mind, through interme- 
diary types or shadows ; and all knowledge is God's 
writing on the soul by means of certain touches from 
afar, prolonged even unto us by communicating 
media. Should this view of the subject be refused, 
and should we be required, with cold philosophy, 
to limit ourselves to material objects, and to their ef- 
fects upon our physical frame, it will still be perfectly 
evident, that particles of matter cannot act upon 
other particles without some means of communica- 
tion. 

When then we are made aware of the existence of 
distant bodies, it is plain that these are brought into 
contact with our nervous system, either by a pro- 
longation and extension of the atoms which compose 
them, or by an impulse continuously carried on from 
themselves to us by the successive agitation of the 
particles of some intervening substance. The latter, 
in cases where the object with which we communi- 
cate is extremely remote, appears to be the most 
rational supposition, and with this modern science is 
perfectly in accord, no longer considering even light 
itself as a corporeal emanation from the sun, but as a 
vibratory impulse communicated from the self lumi- 
nous solar body to an ethereal medium, and thence 
again to our optic nerves. 

By analogical appearances and reasoning, it seems 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 379 

also to be decided, that " heat, like light and sound, 
consists in the undulations of an elastic medium ;" 
and it may perhaps, in process of time, still further 
be proved that odor is not a material emanation, but 
a mere action of matter communicated to our per- 
ception by the nerves. This at least would account 
for the now incomprehensible fact, that a grain of 
musk will diffuse its odor for years without any per- 
ceptible diminution of its weight. 

In the admirable language of Mrs. Somerville, 
" The human frame may therefore be regarded as an 
elastic system, the different parts of which are capa- 
ble of receiving the tremors of elastic media, and of 
vibrating in unison with any number of superposed 
Undulations, all of which have their perfect and inde- 
pendent effect." 

This view of the nature of our sensations cannot 
but greatly simplify our notions concerning them, 
and it is astonishing how much is effected towards 
the comprehension of a subject, when we put out of 
the way all its less important elements. The astro- 
nomer, finding it impossible to determine the motion 
of each heavenly body when disturbed by all the 
rest, takes a simpler problem, and calculates the 
mutual relations of three bodies only ; yet thence 
he learns to judge of the whole celestial system. In 
the same manner, the problem of the action of mat- 
ter upon mind should be rendered as little compli- 
cate as possible ; and thus, in considering sensation, 
it is desirable to bring into one comprehensive view 
its chief conditions, to the exclusion of such contin- 
gencies as merely arise from the modifying influence 



380 THE MEDIUM, OF 

of particular circumstances. Now we have seen 
that the external and mechanical portions of our 
senses are not indispensably and fundamentally con- 
nected with sensation, but rather are adaptations to 
the exigencies of this our temporary existence. The 
two absolute essentials of sensation, without which it 
could not take place under any circumstances, in 
which it bears coincident relation to real external 
objects, are — a medium and a system capable of 
responding to that medium. Now the question is, 
whether there be any fact which renders impossible, 
during the mesmeric sleep, the co-existence of the 
two essential conditions of sensation. One of them 

— that is, motion of the nervous system — has been 
shown to be by no means of necessity abrogated 
during mesmeric sleepwaking ; but the other, that is 
the correlative motion of a medium, does, on a cursory 
view, seem forbidden in cases where the patient sees 
through obstacles which intercept the light, and, to 
our common apprehensions, break up the continuity 
of visual impulsions. On maturer consideration, 
however, we must own that the great principle of 
sensation — namely, motion communicated by media 

— may not only subsist in its integrity during the 
mesmeric vision, but subsist also analogically to all 
we know or can discover of nature's constitution. 

It is true that, in the endeavor to reconcile mes- 
meric sensation with established laws, we are in a 
manner forced into hypothesis. But is this a fault ? 
A great metaphysician has pronounced that •'•' an 
hypothesis, in the first stage of inquiry, far from 
being inconsistent with sound philosophy, may be 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 381 

said to be essential to it." Now the case of mesmer- 
ism is one in which we are absolutely obliged from 
given data to draw deductions, and to reconcile two 
facts by the interposition of a third. With regard to 
mesmeric vision, for instance, we have a phenome- 
non, accurately determined by rigorous experiment, 
which involves two things, — a perceiving mind, and 
an object perceived ; and these we are forced, 
through reason, to connect by a third, namely, a 
medium, for we never knew mind to perceive but 
through an intermediary, and we have reason to 
think that none but the Almighty mind can imme- 
diately perceive objects. Yet more, — the sleep- 
waker has a nervous system, which, though exter- 
nally inert, is manifestly in internal activity ; and 
there is no ground whatever to suppose that the es- 
tablished language of sensation, namely, motion of a 
nerve, is in mesmerism, abolished, though it be pro- 
duced in an unusual way. If then there be motion 
of a nerve correlative with an external object, it is 
plain that this motion must be brought about by 
means, and by material means. What these means 
are we do not indeed exactly know, and we are 
therefore compelled, in a degree, to form conjectures 
about them. Certainly the less of this the better, 
but at any rate we cannot but imagine such a me- 
dium as shall meet the necessities of the case ; herein, 
at least, we have a sure guide. If, taking the facts, 
we proceed, step by step, to deduce from them the 
characteristics of our medium, fitting always the sup- 
position to the reality, and not the reality to the sup- 
position, it seems as if we could not greatly err. 



382 THE MEDIUM OF 

The first thing of which we may be sure is. that 
the medium which connects mesmeric persons with 
external objects is not any of those which we believe 
to be efficient in ordinary sensation. The mecha- 
nism of the senses being null, the media especially 
adapted to that mechanism must also be useless in 
conveying information. The ear was made for air, 
and the eye for light ; but, in this case, the ear is 
closed, and the eye is an abolished organ. That, 
however, there should be no communication between 
the sleepwaker and external objects does by no means 
follow. We have seen that real information re- 
specting the material world can be conveyed through 
other inlets of the body than the ordinary. In the 
same manner, it may be affirmed that even our 
common experience may show us sensation taking 
place through other external media than the ordinary. 
Let us adhere to our principle, that similar motions 
of the nerves may be produced in various ways, and 
different causes end in the same result ; and here 
also it will not fail us. 

The deaf, who hear and enjoy music by means of 
a staff connecting their teeth, or their chest, with a 
musical instrument, do really use another medium 
than the air for the conveyance of acoustic impulses. 
In the same way, we have instances to show that real 
information respecting external actions of matter 
may reach from great distances by other than the 
usual media. Water is even a better conductor of 
sound than air. " According to the experiments of 
M. Colladon the sound of a bell was conveyed under 
water, through the Lake of Geneva, to the distance 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 383 

of about nine miles." Yet again: "The velocity 
of sound, in passing through solids, is in proportion 
to their hardness, and is much greater than in air 
or water. A sound, which takes some time in tra- 
velling through the air, passes almost instantaneously 
along a wire 600 feet long ; consequently it is heard 
twice ; first, as communicated by the wire, and after- 
wards through the medium of the air. The facility 
with which the vibrations of sound are transmitted 
along the grain of a log of wood is well known. In- 
deed, they pass through iron, glass, and some kinds 
of wood, at the rate of 18,530 feet in a second." 

Does any thing similar take place with regard to 
light ? There does ; and even in a more remarkable 
manner. The electric medium is a far more swift 
and subtle messenger of vision than is the luminous 
ether. "A wheel revolving with celerity sufficient 
to render its spokes invisible, when illuminated by a 
flash of lightning, is seen, for an instant, with all its 
spokes distinct, as if it were in a state of absolute 
repose ; because, however rapid the motion may be, 
the light has come and already ceased, before the 
wheel has had time to turn through a sensible 
space." Again, some ingenious experiments, by 
Professor Wheatstone, demonstrate to a certainty 
that the speed of the electric fluid much surpasses 
the velocity of light. It is therefore a different me- 
dium — yet can it serve for all the purposes of vision, 
and even in a superior manner. After hearing these 
things, shall we start at the notion of mesmeric sen- 
sation being conveyed through another medium than 
that in ordinary action ? Even should the sleep- 



384 THE MEDIUM OF ^ 

waker perceive the most distant objects (as some are 
said to have done), can we, from the moment a 
means of communication is hinted to us, be so much 
amazed? If his perception be more vivid, there 
seems to be an efficient cause in his adjuring the 
grosser media for such as are more swift and subtle. 
But the mesmerised person perceives objects not 
only at a distance, but through obstacles which are 
complete impediments to ordinary vision. Let us 
keep in view our principle. Motions of the nerves, 
and something to produce those motions, in corres- 
pondence with an external cause, are the required 
conditions which we seek to unite. If a mesmerised 
person seems to behold an object through an obstacle 
which commonly bars vision, let us not take so vul- 
gar a view of this apparent miracle as to suppose 
that the sleepwaker's sight pierces through opaque 
bodies. It is not, in any case, the eye, but the me- 
dium, which penetrates the obstacle. The impulsion 
on the optic nerve is the cause of vision, and, if 
we can find a medium to transmit that impulsion, 
athwart whatever impediments, vision will take place. 
Any interruption in the medium would be the real 
obstacle to vision. Cut that off by the finest and 
most imperceptible barrier, you at once render vision 
impossible ; but, as long as it continues to be trans- 
mitted through bodies, the most apparently dense 
vision will not be prevented — an object is brought 
into relation with us. This is the whole history of 
seeing; — and is it, in fact, more wonderful that any 
one should be brought into relation with an object 
by means of an impulse transmitted through an ob- 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 385 

stacle, than that the astronomer should be brought 
into relation with a star by means of light which left 
it a thousand years ago ? We seek, then, a medium, 
which shall act through obstacles, which is able to 
transmit impulses athwart them, unimpeded, unim- 
paired. Now, as Newton observes, " the effluvia 
of a magnet can be so rare and subtile, as to pass 
through a plate of glass, without any resistance or 
diminution of their force, and yet so potent as to 
turn a magnetic needle beyond the glass." And 
this effect of magnetism, as we now know, is but one 
of the actions of electricity, which can pierce not 
only through diaphonous but through opaque bodies, 
and which is now supposed to p< rvade not only the 
regions of space but every interstice between the 
particles of apparently solid matter. The electric 
force, then, will naturally occur to him who seeks a 
penetrating and pervading medium, as resolvable of 

the enigma of mesmeric Bensation. 

The philosopher also will remember that electricity, 
when brought to act upon the nerves, in that pecu- 
liar form ot it winch is called galvanism, is capable of 
affecting all the senses, making us seem to hear, see, 
taste or feel. Moreover, it has just been proved to 
equal or surpass light in its capacity of producing real 
sensations of vision in correspondence with external 
objects. It may. however, here be objected that 
electricity never does this save in a manner visible to 
all men ; that if there be vision by means of elec- 
tricity, there is also an actual electric spark, or flash ; 
— whereas, in mesmerism, it is not pretended that 

there is any agency cognizable by any person but the 
33 



386 THE MEDIUM OF ^ 

sleepwaker himself. This is true. But, then, be it 
remembered, the luminous medium itself can be man- 
ifestly shown to have other actions than those with 
which men in general are acquainted — actions which 
can only be perceived by beings in a peculiar state of 
sensibility, or more finely organized than ourselves. 
As an author, to whom I am already deeply indebted, 
has remarked, — " It is quite possible that many vibra- 
tions may be excited in the ethereal medium, incapa- 
ble of producing undulations in the fibres of the hu- 
man retina, which yet have a powerful effect on those 
of other animals, or of insects. Such may receive 
luminous impressions, of which we are totally uncon- 
scious, and, at the same time, they may be insensible 
to the light and colors, which affect our eyes ; their 
perceptions beginning where ours end." 

A proof of the soundness of the above conclusions 
is the fact that the owl and the cat pursue their prey, 
just when the increasing obscurity renders other ani- 
mals purblind. The degrees of visual sensibility in 
different persons are also to be remarked. A lady of 
my acquaintance performed one evening what might 
have passed for a mesmeric miracle, deciphering a 
letter, written in a small cramped hand, at a time 
when there was so little light that five or six persons 
of our society (myself amongst the number) could 
not make out a single word of the letter. That some 
individuals, in certain states of the nervous system, 
see in an obscurity which to other persons appears 
total, has been before observed. A case of this kind 
was very recently mentioned to me by a medical man, 
with every particularity of detail. A peasant, who 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 387 

had fallen into a state of illness from having impru- 
dently plunged his head, when heated, into a bucket 
of cold water, could no longer bear the light of day, 
but was able to discern objects in apparent darkness. 
A number of gentlemen \i<itin:_r him out of curiosity, 
made him tell the time (in darkness) by their watches, 
which they altered sufficiently often to be sure of the 
correctness of the experiment As the man recov- 
ered his health, the susceptibility of his optic nerves 
gradually subsided to the usual pitch. These facts 
should lead us to beware under what circumstances 
we pronounce vision impossible; and should teach 
u< not to limit the perception of others by the boun- 
daries of our own. It is evident that a liner medium 
and a finer degree <>t" sensibility, cooperating to pro- 
due** mesmeric vision, arc causes perfectly adequate 
to account i<>r all its phenomena. 
There is one remark respecting mesmeric sensation 

important to be made. In our normal state, the use 

of our external organs is not only to modify impulse*, 

but to concentrate them, properly modified, on a par- 
ticular nerve. Now, it may be asked, how, when the 
concentrating organs are removed out of the way, 
can impulsions be concentrated upon the nervous 
system, so as to bring die sleepwalker in correspon- 
dence with particular objects, it being evident that, 
in the general motions of a general medium there 
could be none of that particularity and selection 
which sensation evidently requires? To satisfy our- 
selves on this question, we have only to remember 
that the sleepwaker does not, in general, seem to 
know on every side, but that the most common mode 



388 THE MEDIUM OF ^ 

of mesmeric perception (there being two, as I have 
pointed out) is by a concentrated sensibility in one 
particular portion of the frame, which constitutes, as 
it were, an organ whereby in fact impulses coming 
from without are concentrated, as they ordinarily are, 
in another way, by the usual organs. That sleep- 
wakers really do use some part of the nervous sys- 
tem as an organ of concentration, I have had frequent 
occasion to remark — Anna M. always bringing her 
forehead in a line with an object she wished to ex- 
amine, and often starting at the moment when her 
forehead came opposite the object, as if she were 
struck by the impulses of some invisible medium. 
When this was the case, she was always correct in 
her perceptions. In thus bringing the nervous sys- 
tem into immediate relation with an object by means 
of one restricted portion of the nervous system, it is 
evident that the analogies of nature are preserved. 

Thus in examining the media, the action of which 
forms the external pre-requisites of sensation, we 
seem to arrive at a general ground or principle, just 
as, in examining the action of the nerves, or the 
internal pre-requisites of sensation, we formerly ar- 
rived at a ground or principle. And the one seems 
perfectly adjusted to the other. From what we know 
of the constitution of nature, also, we should expect 
to come to some ground in sensation, for the dis- 
coveries of modern science tend to resolve all forces, 
even gravitation itself, into varied actions of one me- 
dium ; and, the universality of that medium being 
once allowed, it is plain that it must be the ground 
in sensation, as in all things else. Besides, viewing 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 389 

man as more than the ephemeral being of a day and 
more especially viewing him in his extended relation- 
ships to creation, considering, too, all we know or 
see as but parts of one great system, we should ex- 
pect not only to arrive at some ground in sensation, 
which had not precise!] reference to the transitory 
purposes of this life, bul at some general ground, 
which might be common to all beings, and which 
might largely pervade the universe. 

The media, which now act upon our organs, we 
should as much conceive to be modifications of the 
pervading and ethereal medium, as our organs them- 
selves an- manifestly modifications of the sentient 
principle. So. in a new state of man. which takes 
him, as it were, out of his sphere, for a while, and 
exiendq his relatione to things in general by remov- 
ing the modifications of the external senses, we 
should expect to find b corresponding removal of the 
modifying media, and a correspondent approxima- 
tion to the general groundwork of sensation. Some- 
thing like such a universal principle or agency in 
ition has long been suspected to exist 

Newton, speaking <>f his celebrated ether, says : — 
•• I- not vision performed chiefly through the vibra- 
tions of this medium, excited in the bottom of the 
eye by the rays of light, and propagated through the 

solid, pellucid, and uniform capillamenta of the optic 

nerves into the place of sensation ! And is not hear- 
ing performed by the vibrations either of this or some 
other medium, excited in the auditory nerves by the 
tremors of the air. and propagated through the solid, 
pellucid, and uniform capillamenta of those nerves 
33" 



390 THE MEDIUM OF ^ 

into the place of sensation ? And so of the other 
senses." 

Admit this, and the mysteries of sensation in sleep- 
waking stand revealed. When once we see clearly 
(as see we must, if we consider nature aright), that 
the communication between all portions of the uni- 
verse is continuous and incapable of interruption — 
that there is a pervading medium, filling all things, 
permeating all, — the extended sphere of mesmeric 
faculties appears no longer miraculous. The hiatus 
once supplied, which seeming obstacles created to our 
apprehensions, there is no link wanting in the chain 
which connects us with external objects. All is har- 
monious — all is clear. And the facts of mesmerism 
alone would establish this beautiful simplicity in the 
economy of nature and in our own ; proving that 
Newton, when he suggested a universal agent in sen- 
sation, outran his age, and in a moment divined that 
which to elucidate will occupy future ages. But, 
alas ! he who defends the cause of mesmerism, be- 
cause he is penetrated with its truth, is " cabiird, 
cribb'd, con fin' d " in his mode of argument. He 
cannot support a theory, however noble, by the facts 
of mesmerism, nor reason from them by the most 
legitimate induction : for he is called upon to prove 
that the facts themselves are not absurdities, — that 
all which he perceives to be so admirably illustrative 
of Nature's order is not anomalous and monstrous. 
The foundation-stones of belief for his system are 
not yet laid ; and he has to lay them in a quaking 
and unstable soil, even as the first builders of Venice 
had to waste their materials beneath the engulphing 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 391 

sea, long before the ocean city could rise, in stability 
and beauty, from the waves. A time, however, is at 
hand, when the facts of mesmerism, being* accepted 
as facts, will themselves be used as the most valuable 
demonstrations of truths and principles, which the 
genius of great men foreknew. 

If it may be permitted me, for a moment, to antici- 
pate that era. I may remark that the fact of the sleep- 
wake r seeing colore, when the usual action of light is 
plainly absent, while he does not behold objects mag- 
nified through a convex glass, is a proof that, as 
Newton conjectured, the efficient cause of vision is 
the vibration of another medium than light, and is 
not dependent on the anterior mechanism of the eye. 
All tin- i- in perfect harmony with science* Colors 
depend on vibrations of the optic nerves, which vi- 
bration- are shown to be more perfectly and perma- 
nently produced by electricity even than by light; 

for Profe880r \\ heatstone exhibited by electric light 
color- distinctly, and as ai rest, when they were re- 
volving bo rapidly as to be all mingled together into 
white under any ordinary illumination. On the other 
hand, the enlargement of objects by a magnifying 
glass is a mechanical effect dependent on a modifica- 
tion of light, which could not take place where the 
Conditions are so plainly absent as in the mesmeric 
dumber. The result of the experiment is at once 
conformable to reason and to science, and indicative 
of the sincerity of the sleepwaker. Here, also, we 
may see the difference between sensation general and 
special. The peculiar action of light, whereby an 
object is magnified, is only an adaptation to our pre- 



392 THE MEDIUM OF 

sent imperfect organs. By it we gain no new, no 
peculiar, no fundamental idea : we only see objects 
when magnified, as if they were nearer ; but the no- 
tion of color is specifically different from every other 
and is common, we may suppose, to all animated 
creatures. Thus is mesmerism, in all its parts, cal- 
culated to lead us to principles of extensive applica- 
tion. If it seems to contradict our former knowledge, 
it only contradicts it in its externals and deceptive 
appearances. But in truth it never does contradict 
either nature or previous knowledge ; it is only in 
opposition to narrow views. The more we become 
aware what true experience is, the more shall we find 
that from experience mesmerism strays not. If men 
had wished to believe it, half the evidence that is 
now brought forward to prove it possible would have 
proved it sure. 

I conclude my remarks on sensation by recalling 
to the reader's mind a few of the most important re- 
flections on which we have been engaged, taking 
sight, our chief sense, as the type and example of 
the rest. 

The real nature of vision is as shut to the vulgar 
as the mesmeric mode of sight is to the learned. 

By the eye we appreciate light and color only : the 
rest is an operation of the judgment. 

Viewed metaphysically, seeing is but a particular 
kind of knowledge : viewed physically, seeing con- 
sists in certain nervous motions, responsive to the 
motions of a medium. That medium, in our ordi- 
nary condition, is light, the action of which seems 
cut off and intercepted in the case of mesmeric 
vision , 



MESMERIC SENSATION. 393 

When, therefore, we hear that a mesmerised per- 
son has correctly seen an object through obstacles, 
which to us appear opaque, we, conceiving no means 
of communication between the person and the object, 
exclaim that the laws of nature have been violated. 
But, in all casefl where information is conveyed 
through interrupted space-, show but the means of 
communication, and astonishment cearfes. 

When we know that there is a medium, permeat- 
ing in One Of oilier of Us tonus all substances what- 

ev< r. and that this medium is eminently capable of 
exciting sensations of sight, and when we take this 
in conjunction with a heightened sensibility in the 
percipient person, rendering him aware of impulses 
whereof we arc not cognisant, we are no longer in- 
clined to deny a tint or suppose a miracle. 

Finally, all sensation has but one principle. All 
that i- required lor its production is, that objects 

Bhould be brought into ;i certain relation with us by 

something intermediate; and this is effected by the 

impulsions of certain media upon nerves, the last 

changes in winch are .the immediate forerunners of 
completed sensation. 

Thus thin--, which are beheld in their primal 

iic - by the Almighty, are to us known in their 

beautiful results, [t is to the idea, not to the con- 

trivana tor exciting the idea, that we are to look; 
for the unlettered peasant, who has a conviction and 
a feeling what lii_rlit is. has in reality as true a notion 
of this the first effluence of supernal power as he 
who has divided the sunbeams with a prism or calcu- 
lated the undulations of the ethereal medium. With 



394 MEDIUM OF MESMERIC SENSATION. 

respect to external things, we have only to consider 
God and man — not God and the philosopher. 

Taking this simple view of sensation, we find no- 
thing in mesmerism contradictory of nature. Under 
its influence the human frame continues to be still a 
system of nerves acted upon by elastic media, for the 
purpose of conveying to us the primal impulses of the 
Almighty mind, which made, sustains, and moves the 
universe. 



BOOK IV. 



To every form of being if as^i^n'd 
An active principle : — howe'er remov'd 
From sense and observation, it subsists 
In all things, in all natures, in the stars 
/are heaven, the onendnring clondt, 
In Qbwer and tree, in every pebbly stone 
'J'liat pavea tie- brooks, the stationary rocks, 

The in. a ' .and tlie invisible air." 

Wordsworth. 



I UK MI>MKKK MKDII >f. 

Hating, as I trust, shown the conformity of mes- 
merism, in all essential points, with the principles of 
nature and the inferences of reason, I now proceed 

to exhibit it in connection with such a cause as its 
peculiar manifestations indicate and demand. 

First, [ affirm that, productive of the effects called 
mesmeric, there is an action of matter as distinct and 
specific as thai of light, heat, electricity, or any other 
of the imponderabl ts, as they are called; — 

that, when the mesmeriser influences his patient, he 

does this l>v a medium, either known already in an- 
other guise, or alto-ether new to our experience. 

What proofs, it will be asked, can I bring forward 
of this assertion ? I answer, such proofs as are con- 



396 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

sidered available in all cases where an impalpable 
imponderable medium is to be considered ; facts, 
namely, or certain appearances, which, bearing a pe- 
culiar character, irresistibly suggest a peculiar cause. 

Let us take only one of these. 

Standing at some yards distant from a person who 
is in the mesmeric state (that person being perfectly 
stationary, and with his back to me), I, by a slight 
motion of my hand (far too slight to be felt by the 
patient, through any disturbance of the air), draw 
him towards me, as if I actually grasped him. 

What is the chain of facts which is here presented 
to me? First, an action of my mind, without which 
I could not have moved my hand ; secondly, my 
hand's motion ; thirdly, motion produced in a body 
altogether external to, and distant from myself. But 
it will at once be perceived, that, in the chain of 
events as thus stated, there is a deficient link. The 
communication between me and the distant body is 
not accounted for. How could an act of my mind 
originate in an effect so unusual ? 

That which is immaterial cannot, by its very defi- 
nition, move masses of water. It is only when mys- 
teriously united to a body that spirit is brought into 
relationship with place or extension, and under such 
a condition alone, and only through such a medium, 
can it propagate motion. Now, in some wondrous 
way, spirit is in us incorporate. Our bodies are its 
medium of action. By them, and only by them. 
far as our experience reaches, are we enabled to 
move masses of foreign matter. I may sit and may 
will forever that yonder chair come to me. but with- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 397 

out the direct agency of my body it must remain 
where it is. All the willing in the world cannot stir 
it an inch. I must bring myself into absolute con- 
tact with the body which I desire to move. But. in 
the case before I18, 1 will — 1 extend my hands; I 
move them hither and thither, and 1 see the body of 

another persori — a mass of matter external to my- 

sell'. \. t not in apparent contact with me — moved 
and sway* d by the same action which stirs my own 
body. Am 1 thence to conclude that a miracle has 
ii performed — that the laws of nature are re- 
versed — that 1 can move foreign matter without 
contact or intermediate i Or must I not 

rather he certain that, if 1 am able to swaj a distant 

\. n l- by means of some unseen lever — that 
volition is employing something which i- equivalent 
to a body — something) which maj he likened to an 
extended corporeity, which ha- become the organ of 

ln\ w ill : 

Surely then is no effect without a cause; and 
from action- we may infer the existence ofan agent. 
We do this a thousand times in other cases, — in that 
of mesmerism, for instance. We never behold this 
power hut in it- results. It cannot even be made 
evident, like the electric spark, <>r felt in our own 
persons, like the galvanic concussion* The needle 
that has become a magnet, has under-one no change 

which any mortal -l-ht is line enough to appreciate, 
has acquired no weight which can he detected by 
our earthly senses. Yet. solely because we are sure 
that we behold certain phenomena, we allow that 
there is a distinct form of electricity, to which we 
34 



898 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM.^ 

have given the name of magnetism. Why should 
we refuse to mesmerism that which we grant to 
magnetism ? It is true that as yet we have no balance 
of torsion, whereby the mesmeric force can be mea- 
sured ; but in the human body itself we do possess an 
instrument whereby its presence may be ascertained ; 
nor would it be reasonable to insist upon separate 
agencies being detected by the same test. Why, 
then, but from the force of prejudice, should we 
call the mesmeric medium a gratuitous assumption ? 
That such a medium exists is not a gratuitous 
assumption, but an unavoidable deduction of reason. 
But there is a class of persons who refuse to admit 
of anything which they cannot see, taste, or handle ; 
with such it is difficult to argue. Should proofs by 
experiment be exhibited to them again and again, 
they still return to their cuckoo note — " Show me 
the agent." One of these practical men, as they are 
called, actually said to me on one occasion, u I never 
will believe that what you call mesmerism exists, 
unless you can put it in a bottle, and submit it to 
analysis." 

To what end, then, is reason given us, if not to 
judge of things invisible by those which are clearly 
seen ? For what purpose possess we the irresistible 
propensity to supply deficient links in a chain of 
causation, if not to prompt us where our senses fail ? 
We move a magnet over a needle ; the needle moves 
in a corresponding manner ; and the human mind 
is so constituted that we cannot behold these two 
facts, in seeming connection, without uniting them 
by a third, which we consider as proved by them, 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 399 

since it is in truth their necessary consequence. We 
infer that the effect is produced by means of a mag- 
netic current or medium, — a something which pro- 
pagates motion from the magnet to the needle. This 
something we cannot indeed behold; — yet do we 
believe in it, — and with justice, for that which rea- 
son perceives to be necessary is not an invention, and 
can never be superfluous: on the contrary, the only 
immutable and essential truths come out of the mould 
of the intuitive reason, which, as Coleridge observes, 
Stops not at • this will be so," but at once decides, 
u This must be so." 

Now, in all cases where motion is communicated 
from one body to another, the line of communication 
must be maintained unbroken. The first impulse 
gives motion to certain atoms, which in their turn 

propel others, and >o on. till the w hole series between 

the active body and the body which is to receive the 
original impulse is Bel in motion, and then, at length, 

the sequence of events is complete, and the body, 
towards which motion tended, is Bet vibrating. If 
the medium that propagates the first impulsion be 
undulatory and elastic, its atoms only oscillate on 
either side a fixed point of rest; but, if it be com- 
posed of traveling atoms, there is an actual progres- 
sion of the medium. In either case, motion is pro- 
pagated by a real action of matter till it reach its 
final destination. This is the history of all commu- 
nicated motion, and it is plain that this holds good 
whether we behold the collection of atoms, in a bo- 
dily shape, that transmits the motion, as in the case 
of one billiard ball propelling another, or whether 



400 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. *> 

we behold them not, as in the case of sound being 
communicated to the ear from a vibrating body, by 
means of the intervening air. I grant that the old 
axiom, " A body cannot act where it is not/' is very 
properly exploded ; but for it we must substitute an- 
other ; namely, " A body cannot act where it is not, 
save by deputy, or transmissive means." Yet some 
have overlooked this truth, and in their zeal to avoid 
theories, when they behold two sensible actions, evi- 
dently dependent the one on the other, and yet ap- 
parently disjointed, fear to unite them properly by 
suggesting the presence of an unseen link, which 
nevertheless cannot but occur between the visible an- 
tecedent and the visible consequent ; for motion is 
not an entity that can go through void spaces inde- 
pendently and alone ; it is merely a property which 
has no existence out of the subject that manifests it ; 
and, where matter fails, there motion fails also. It 
is vain, then, to hold such language as if it were pos- 
sible for one body to produce motion in another with- 
out something intermediate, — that is, miraculously 
and without means ; yet your good hater of theories 
will even dare to blame Newton for having suggested 
an ether to account for that action which one body 
produces on another, and even, in many cases, from 
vast distances, and which we call attraction. It is 
true that Newton may be wrong in the manner in 
which he manages his ether, and accounts for impul- 
sion and re-impulsion by differences of dense and 
rare ; but he cannot be wrong in preserving an un- 
broken series of atoms between separate bodies which 
manifestly influence each other, — between the sun 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 401 

and the earth for instance, — since, in this case, there 
is mutual action, and motion communicated from a 
distance. Extending the principle, and perceiving 
that all the heavenly bodies were in mutual relation- 
ship, and the whole celestial system harmoniously 
bound together, Newton supposed his ether to be of 
Universal action, and to till and pervade creation, es- 

tablishing a means of communication between all its 

eral parts. Were this allowed, there would be 

but little difficulty in explaining mesmerism ; but a 
sublime divination of this kind is too vast for the 
general understanding. Accordingly, even Newtonfs 
name has Tailed to render the theory palatable, and 
men of small views have dated to call even this BUg- 

ion of a mighty mind gratuitous^ treating its au- 
thor with a levitj which can only lessen one's respect 

the objectors. Have these cavillers an intellect 
superior to Newton's own ? If they have, let them 
give us something better than Newton's suggestions 

(better, not only in their own opinion but in ours) 

respecting the great problems of creation ; some the- 
01 \ more solid and sublime to satisfy the cravings of 
humanity alter pure and lofty generalization : till then 
let them, at least by silence, acquiesce in Professor 
Playiair's beautifully expressed opinion of the queries : 
— " Such enlarged and comprehensive views, so many 

new and bold conceptions, were never before com*- 
bined with the sobriety and caution of philosophical 
induction. The anticipation of future discoveries, 
the assemblage of so many facts from the most dis- 
tant regions of human research, all brought to bear 
on the same points, and to elucidate the same ques- 
34* 



402 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ■> 

tions, are never to be sufficiently admired." In re- 
calling this to the reader's mind, I trust that I seem 
not to stray from my subject, which is in truth so 
deeply implicated in the truth or falsehood of New- 
ton's principal suggestions. But I might leave this 
great man's defence to time, which already has 
" brought in its revenges," science being even now 
occupied in developing Newton's ideas, and in estab- 
lishing as undoubted truths the greater part of all 
w 7 hich he so modestly advanced as queries. Facts 
relative to the acceleration observed in the mean mo- 
tion of comets have demonstrated, to the satisfaction 
of men of science, the existence of a resisting me- 
dium, undulatory and elastic, which pervades the 
known universe. 

How frequently it has thus happened that the de- 
ductions of the pure reason have triumphed over the 
cavils and hesitations of the understanding which, 
being conversant with matters of experience only, 
cannot step beyond the sensuous and the known ! 
Kepler believed that the harmony of our system re- 
quired a planet between Mars and Jupiter, and the 
deficiency is now actually supplied by the discovery 
of the four singular orbs which seem once to have 
formed but one single body. My reader's memory 
will doubtless supply other instances where the philo- 
sopher in his closet has outrun experiment, and lias 
divined what future observation has verified and facts 
confirmed. When, then, we find Mesmer (who 
whatever were his faults of conduct, was no con- 
temptible thinker) suggesting a universal medium as 
alone explanatory of mesmeric phenomena, let us. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 403 

instead of unwisely scoffing, inquire whether the cir- 
cumstances of the case may not possibly render the 
existence of such a medium a positive necessity, and 
a truth palpable to reason. This at least we know, 
that all science seems now tending to refer the appa- 
rently distinct agencies of nature to the varied oper- 
ation of one medium : to establish, in fine, an ether 
sudi as Newton had imagined, and such as Mesmer 
perceived would satisfactorily account for the appa- 
rent miracles (rf his new science. 

Now whether mesmerism be a distinct medium, or 
only the distinct effect of a genera] medium, widely 
manifested in other offices, I will not take upon my- 
self to decide. We n<> longer consider electrieity, 

magnetism, even Kghl itself, to be separate and inde- 
pendent agents ; we call them effects. And this is 
well, if we remember to refer effects to causes, and 
properties and qualities to real substances and sub- 
ject-. \\V must not turn all the goings-on of the 
Id into mere abstractions. Vibrations imply a 
vibrating body ; electric motions or concussions, 
something that moves or is concussed. It will, in- 
deed, greatly simplify our idea, to consider all the 
various appearances of nature as bo many actions of 
matter, but we must beware of supposing that, where 
action is present, matter can be absent. 1 run very 
willing, then, to call all mesmeric phenomena effects ; 
but I not the less contend thai they must be effects 
of something. I am willing to consider mesmerism 
itself as an action of matter, yet still of matter. I 
cannot tell whether, in the case of mesmeric agency 
matter assumes the form of a fluid or a gas, but I 



404 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. -. 

know and am sure that material agency there is. 
This agency may be only one of the modifications of 
a substance which operates in other ways, or it may 
be the single action of a single substance. But, in 
fact, the probability is, that there are really various 
media in nature, the finer, we may suppose, occupy- 
ing the interstices of the grosser, distinct yet inter- 
fused, wheel within wheel, a subtile mechanism. 
Every one knows that the atmosphere is the medium 
through which sound is conveyed to us. A bell 
rung under the exhausted receiver of an air-pump is 
inaudible ; but the crystal walls, that keep out air, 
bar not the passage of light and heat. Newton's ex- 
periment of this, and his consequent reasoning on the 
fact, appear to me conclusive. He says, Q,u. 18. — 
" If, in two large, tall, cylindrical vessels of glass, 
inverted, two little thermometers be suspended, so as 
not to touch the vessels, and the air be drawn out of 
one of these vessels, and these vessels thus prepared, 
be carried out of a cold place into a warm one, the 
thermometer in vacuo will grow warm as much and 
almost as soon as the thermometer which is not in 
vacuo. And, when the vessels are carried back into 
the cold place, the thermometer in vacuo will grow 
cold almost as soon as the other thermometer. Is 
not the heat of the warm room conveyed through the 
vacuum by the vibrations of a much subtiler medium 
than air, which, after the air was drawn out, re- 
mained in the vacuum ? And is not this medium 
the same with that medium by which light is re- 
fracted and reflected? " 

The conclusion which such experiments force upon 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 405 

us is. that there really exist in nature different media, 
related, yet distinct. If, therefore, I am understood 
literally instead of figuratively, when I speak of mes- 
merism as an individual agency, I shall not seem 
greatly to have violated the analogies of nature. 
This at feast I affirm, mesmerism has its own peculiar 
action : and therefore, for the sake of convenience, 
I Bhall denominate matter, as it is developed in this 
particular way. the mesmeric medium, a term with 
which. 1 trust, none of my readers will be disposed 
to quarrel; the advantage and propriety of referring 
one class of effects to one cause being manifest. 
We do this naturally in all cases where distinction is 

required. The imponderable fluids are still charac- 
terized, pro formd, by individual name-, though, we 
believe, thai they may be children of one parent 

From certain effects we are allowed to presume the 
existence of B luminous medium. J. therefore, by 

parity of reasoning, may be allowed, from other 
effects, to infer the existence of a mesmeric medium. 

And. in truth, there is no agency which more 
manifestly than this may claim to be distinctive, 
Since it is developed under quite other circumstances ; 
and. being developed, presents quite other phenome- 
na than any material action with which we have 

hitherto been acquainted. 

It neither results from a union of gases, nor from 
chemical composition. It is not developed by the 
rubbing of amber or the juxtaposition of minerals. 
It is elicited by certain actions of living nature alone. 
Viewed merely as a physical agency, it originates a 
sleep, sui generis, which pervades the external or- 



406 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. " 

gans, yet leaves the intelligence free ; it brings the 
nervous system into a state of exceeding sensibility, 
rendering it cognizant of influences by which at other 
times it is wholly unaffected. 

Now, what is the medium we know not ; and 
therefore all that remains for us, in our ignorance, to 
do, is to gather as much information concerning it as 
we can. We cannot analyze it in the same manner 
as light, or separate it into its component parts, like 
the atmosphere ; but every agent has its own ele- 
ments, and consequently a method of analysis proper 
to itself. This is clear ; in its mode of action it can 
alone be made manifest ; its sensible action, there- 
fore, is the legitimate sphere in which it may be 
studied ; and, till we have all its facts and relations, 
we have only to observe its phenomena, and to state 
the results of our observation as plainly as possible. 

First, then, it is an agency, which has physical 
effects on man. 1 

That any one, who has been conversant with even 
the first symptoms produced by mesmerism, should 
doubt the physical and distinct character of the 
agency, seems impossible. However marvellous be 
the train of mental phenomena consequent upon its 
operation, its primary effects are undoubtedly upon 
the body of the patient. Those who are neither 
under the predisposing influence of fear or of imagi- 
nation, who know not what they have to expect, 

1 And on brutes also. On this point I could state many curious 
particulars; but I desire to startle my reader as little as possible, 
and to exclude from the present work whatever bears not strict ref- 
erence to the human influence. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 407 

who. perhaps, close their eyes from the beginning of 
the experiment, all agree in feeling a weight upon the 
eyelids, accompanied by a slight pricking: then fol- 
lows the sensation of a cold current of air, streaming 
in the direction of the mesmeriser's iingcrs, and of a 
torpor in the limbs, which gradually increases, until 
spontaneous motion becomes not only difficult but 
impossible to the patient 

A lady of much intelligence, whom I recently 
mesmerised at Rome, wai determined to observe, as 
long ELS she could retain her consciousness, what 
would be her sensations under the mesmeric influ- 
ence. On recovering from the sleep into which she 
had been successively thrown, she told me that at 
first she felt an increasing weight upon the eyelids, 

and an inclination to dose them, which she endeav- 
ored to combo! by looking often at b rase oontaining 
flowers that stood opposite to her. By degrees, 
however, a kind of vapor seemed to steal between 
herself and the object she regarded, until she could 
distinguish nothing whatever. Her eyelids were 
then irresistibly drawn together* After closing them 
she was aware of a tingling in the arms, and currents 
of air seemed to move around her in various direc- 
tions. The strength and velocity of these currents 
appeared constantly to increase, until the power of 
observation failed and consciousness waa suspended. 
Subsequently, when in the natural state, she begged 
me to say whether I had not moved my hands rapidly 
and violently when mesmerising her, so as to produce 
those currents of air which she had felt. I assured 
her that, on the contrary, I had moved my hands 



408 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

slowly and gently all the time. She, then, still in- 
credulous, begged me to repeat the same movements 
which I had used in mesmerising. I did so, and she 
declared that she could not at all feel those currents 
to which she had been sensible in the incipient state 
of sleepwaking. 

E. A. (the youth who enjoyed such a high degree 
of mesmeric vision,) used to describe similar sensa- 
tions, and has frequently spoken to me of a kind of 
vapor rising before his eyes during mesmerisation. 
When questioned about this in sleepwaking, he 
declared that the vapor proceeded from me, and 
seemed to penetrate and pervade his frame. This 
he asserted to be the effectual cause of the mesmeric 
sleep. 

Nothing is more interesting than to mark the cor- 
respondences of sensation under mesmeric treatment, 
manifested by different persons, at different times, 
and in different places. Every fresh instance of Bucfa 
analogical feeling is as a new argument in favor of 
the reality and constancy of mesmeric influence. 

Other facts are not wanting, which contribute to 
bring the agency within the domain of physics. 

Like the galvanic force it seems capable of aggre- 
gation in being transmitted through kindred sub- 
stances. 

I have sometimes formed what may be called a 
mesmeric pile, by seating five or six persons together 
in a line, or half-circle, holding each other's hands : 
I have then mesmerised the first in the rank, who has 
passed on the influence to the second, who has again 
transmitted it to the third, and so on, by each press- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 409 

_ the hand held by each, at regular periods of time. 
Under this treatment I have invariably found that 
the mesmeric influence was most powerfully demon- 
strated in the person who was farthest from myself; 
that is, in the person who received the original 
impulse through the greatest number of intervening 
transmitters. The shades of gradation were also in 
these experiments justly preserved: the first person 
scarcely experiencing any sensation, the second feel* 
ing a more decided influence, and so in progression, 
till the last was thrown into the complete mesmeric 
stat 

in : That the nr-meric influence ifl capable of 

exhaustion and repair, like any other physical agency, 
has been frequently forced upon my conviction. 
That when I am strongest I can best mesmerise, is a 
(act known t<> me from personal experience; also, 
that in\ power declines in proportion to the fatigue 
consequent upon its exertion* Tin- was very strik- 
inglj exemplified in some experiments, in which 
Professor \ of Neufchatel, in Switzerland, 

kindly bore a part : th ifl enabling me to honor mes- 
merism by associating it with the name of one of the 
most distinguished naturalists in Europe* 

After mesmerising the Professor himself for an 
hour, during which I felt considerably fatigued, I 
made an essay upon a person, whom I usually influ- 
enced with full BUCCe88. Thifl time, however. I only 

partially succeeded ; and a third trial upon another 
individual, who. in general, was most susceptible to 
the mesmeric influence, was wholly unsuccessful. 
The failure was quite unlooked for, and astonished 

35 



410 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

the patient himself, who exclaimed, after I had mes- 
merised him for a considerable time, u This is sur- 
prising ! I feel nothing whatever ! You produce no 
effect upon me this evening." After resting half an 
hour, and taking a glass of wine, I again attempted 
to influence this patient. I now succeeded better 
than on the first trial, yet still could bring him no 
further than the first stage of imperfect mesmeric 
sleep. 

I may also remark that the act of mesmerising is 
followed by a very peculiar sensation of exhaustion 
and fatigue, for which the slight muscular exertion 
which the process demands is quite insufficient to 
account. Exercise in the open air, and such means 
as are best calculated to restore the bodily strength 
in general, I have found to be the best restoratives 
on such occasions. Yet, though particular acts of 
mesmerising induce temporary fatigue, it is quite 
certain that the general mesmeric force of an indi- 
vidual is strengthened, like any other corporeal gift. 
by just and regular exercise. As a magnet which is 
laid by has not half the power that it has when kept 
in action, so, as I have found by experience that a 
mesmeriser who is out of practice has actually less of 
mesmeric influence than when he mesmerises regu- 
larly, with a due attention to the u ne quid minis.'' 
This, again, brings the medium within the domain of 
physics. 

Another discovery which I have been enabled to 
make respecting the action of mesmerism is. that it 
decidedly bears a relation to the slowness or rapidity 
of the mesmeriser s respiration during the act of mes- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 411 

merising. I have tried this again and again, and 
always with the same result. In proportion to the 
rapidity of my breathing was the effect produced — 
an effect independent of the actual effluence of the 
breath upon the patient (though this indeed also aids 
the mesmeric processes), for the same result has en- 
sued when my head has been turned away from the 

person I was mesmerising. How singularly this fact 
connects the mesmeric with the chemical and vital 
forces 1 need not observe. 

At present it aeema necessary that I should reply 

loan objection, which, with some apparent justice, 

may be advanced against the claim which mesmerism 
puts forward to be considered as a physical agent 

It has been asserted that, when the attention of 
mesmeric patient- is preoccupied and diverted from 
the mesmeric processes; or, when the imagination 
has oot been previously advised of an effect to follow, 
the agencj is null. 

This statement demand- an examination the more 
ious, inasmuch as it is one of those half-truths 

which Coleridge has denounced as fatal to true phi- 
losophy. 

It UlUSt be allowed that the mesmeric influence IS, 

to a certain degree, impeded, should it be essayed 
upon a person who is determined to resist it, or whose 

mind is actively engaged upon other matters ; but 

doc- tin-, can this prove that the agency is null, save 
in the imagination of the patient? The only thing 
that it demonstrates with certainty is that which every 
rational man who has at all studied the subject must 
concede — namely, that the force employed in the 



412 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. - 

mesmeric processes is not sudden, or violent in its 
action, but of the nature of those subtile influences 
which it requires a certain attention, and indeed edu- 
cation of the sensibility, to perceive. A savage has 
been known to track his prey like a dog, by the 
scent alone ; and, in doing so, he must, of necessity, 
fix all his attention upon the fine exhalations, whereby 
he is guided. But how plainly absurd it would be to 
affirm on that account, that there was no actual ex- 
citing cause of the sensations of the savage ! But, it 
is argued, the imagination must be forewarned before 
the effects, called mesmeric, can occur ; and is not 
this sufficient to refer them to the imitative power of 
the imagination ? The answer is not difficult. 

Imagination, indeed, imitates ; but then it must 
have something to imitate. The very expression 
presupposes a model, and gives real existence to the 
subject in debate. Granting that which indeed I do 
not concede — namely, that the effects of mesmerism 
can be proved without mesmerism, and by the ima- 
gination solely, it by no means follows that certain 
effects have not at certain times been produced by 
mesmerism, and by pure mesmerism. That which is 
spurious argues that which is true, and many copies 
of a picture place the existence of an original beyond 
a doubt. 

Again : they who draw strong conclusions against 
mesmerism by affirming that it cannot take effect un- 
less the imagination be prepared to receive it. should 
remember that they, who, deeming they shall feel 
nothing under mesmerism, and do actually feel no- 
thing, are both forewarned and forearmed against the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 413 

influence in debate, and are thus themselves under 
the predisposing sway of the imagination as much as 
their opponents, only in a different manner ; the 
one party believing they shall, the other that they 
shall not, experience certain effects. Under these 
circumstance*, how the latter can pretend to a more 
accurate judgment on the point than the former, I 
confess I cannot perceive, m Imagination does much," 
the anti-mesmerists — granted; and let us have 
the full benefit of the principle. If imagination be 
so potent, it may also render insensible to mesmeric 
influence those who are predetermined to feel nothing 
of it. V< t more: the forceofthe mind to resist even 

the most powerful influences ma] be easily shown by 
fecta to !)'■ great — Day, incalculable. In Lbckhart's 
Life of Scott, an anecdote, proving this, is related by 
>t1 himself , of one of the Duke of Buccleugh's 
farmers. "His father had given him a quantity of 
laudanum (writes Sir Waller) instead of some other 
medicine. The mistake was instantly discovered ; 
but the young man had sufficient energy and force 

of mind to combat the operation of the drug. While 
all around him were stupid with fear, he rose, sad- 
dled his horse, and rode to Selkirk (six or seven 
miles) : thus saving the time that the doctor must 
have taken in coming to him. It is \ery curious 
that his agony of mind was able to suspend the ope- 
ration of the drug until he had alighted, when it 
instantly began to operate. He recovered per- 
fectly/'' 

The degree to which a person may resist, yet still 
be influenced by the mesmeric agency, when pre- 
35* 



414 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM* 

occupied by some counteracting idea, was, on one 
occasion, demonstrated to me, and, as it were, mark- 
ed off and measured in an interesting manner. 

A friend of mine, at Cambridge, who knew no- 
thing whatever of animal magnetism (as it was then 
called) but the name, consented to let me try an ex- 
periment upon him before some incredulous persons, 
who had said that they never would believe in the 
agency until they saw it exhibited upon some one 
who did not even know that he was to go to sleep. 

It being ascertained that Mr. H (the sincerest of 

all men) was really ignorant of even so much mes- 
meric lore, I and my patient sate down in our pro- 
per relative positions. At the end of five minutes 

(though it was the unsleepy time of noon) Mr. H 

began to close his eyes and to nod ; but soon started, 
rubbed his eyes, shook himself, and went through all 
the usual formula of a person who wishes to keep 
awake. This alternate nodding and arousing went 
on for some time, when, tired at length of such un- 
satisfactory results, I gave the matter up, and quitted 
my chair. The patient was then questioned as to 
what he had felt? " Only very sleepy," he replied. 
K I experienced no electric shock, nor any thing of 
the kind, though I watched and waited for it." " But 
if you felt sleepy, why did not you go to sleep?" 

asked some one. " Oh," answered Mr. H , " what 

would I not have given to have gone to sleep ; but I 
thought I must on no account do this, as I was to 
keep a sharp look out for the electric shock !" My 
reader may smile at this, but I can assure him that 
the ignorance of my friend respecting the effects of 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 415 

mesmerism is no measure of his information on other 
subjects. 

It appears, then, that the only concession we have 
to make to the anti-mesmerist is. that the mood of 
mind and body which is most favorable to the recep- 
tion of mesmeric influence is that which Wordsworth 
has characterized under the t i t It - of •• a wise passive- 
How completely this refutes the arguments, 
or rathei assumptions, of those, who would resolve 
all mesmerism into imagination, is manifest. But it 
is time that this question should be for ever set at 
rest. How such a cause as imagination could at 
any time be assigned <>r accepted as explanatory of 
mesmeric phenomena, is matter of wonder, and that 
it should l». -,,. diminishes one's respect for the 

icity of the human Species. Here, indeed, is in- 

efficienf causation! Here, tally, i- gratuitous as- 
sumption! 1 have heard of imagination keeping 
persons awake, hut never of its setting them to sleep. 
This bus] power holds no possible alliance with 
mesmerism, whose gentle influences, like streams, 

thai are only heard when we listen for them in the 
hush of night, must he attended to with the quiet 

patience of a peaceful spirit. 

Bui the imagination theory is really too absurd to 
merit a serious refutation. 

A thousand times 1 have seen mesmeric patients 
placed under circumstances where the action of 
imagination was plainly impossible. In proof of this, 
I have only to refer to the preceding books of this 
work. Persons, it will there be seen, have been 
thrown into the mesmeric state when asleep, and 



416 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

wholly unadvised of any experiment to be tried upon 
them. They have been drawn towards the mesmer- 
iser from a distance, when standing with their backs 
to him ; they have manifested phenomena, coinciding 
with those displayed by other mesmeric patients at 
different times and at different places, and which 
could not have resulted from imitation, since the 
patients themselves, not knowing a previous type, 
were plainly incapable of producing a copy. 

Surely facts like these imperatively call upon us to 
acknowledge an agency, which we may call mesmeric, 
or what we please, so long as we confound it not 
with imagination, imitation, et hoc genus omne of 
inefficient and inapplicable causes. 

But our views of mesmerism, as a distinct and 
physical agent, would, indeed, be imperfect, were we 
to stop here. Ourselves would then be guilty of 
uttering only half the truth. Physical though the 
agent be, its offices all touch upon life and thought 
so nearly, that to regard it simply in a mechanical 
light is impossible. In order to know it rightly, or in 
any other than a partial manner, we must consider 
it in its relationship to ourselves, living, breathing 
men. If purely physical, why should it produce such 
singular mental effects ? and why should it not affect 
all men alike ? These are questions which will occur, 
and which demand a satisfactory answer. 

The cause must be sought in its acting more espe- 
cially upon that most mysterious part of us — the 
nervous system ; — on the apparatus of sensation, the 
builder-up of all we are, of all we know ; — on that 
wondrous portion of our being, which occupies the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 417 

very confines where mind and matter dimly meet ; — 
on that which is more intimately ourselves than our 
mere external frame, of which it appears to be the 
strength and the life : for we may lose any member 
of motion and yet preserve in their integrity all our 
sources of information ; but a trifling injury to the 
optic or auditory nerve will cut us oil* from a whole 
world of knowledge, and a slight pressure on the 
brain may remove Ofi at once beyond the pale of 
humanity, into that fearful region where man's 
" thoughts are combinations of disjointed things. 9 ' 
Let us further consider that, in fact, there is nothing 
which affects us physically that does not also, to a 
certain extent, affect US mentally, nay morally : every 

nt in nature being calculated to call into action 
all the capacities of our being; thus showing how 
exquisitely, according to Wordsworth's beautiful phi- 
>hy, 

u The external world is fitted to the mind." 

Light, by it- presence or absence, disposes us to 
courage or fear, joy or sorrow, hope or despondency. 
Heat, when properly moderated, gives us a sensation 
of well-being, of good-humor, and is favorable to 
the exercise of our intellectual faculties ; while, on 
the other hand, cold is apt to extinguish both our wit 
and our amiability. Pope remarks that the benevo- 
lence of some persons depends on the state of the 
atmosphere, and solves a generous action emanating 
from a churlish mind, by suggesting that 

u Perhaps the wind just shifted from the east." 



418 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

Shakspeare's advice not to ask a favor of a man till 
he has well dined will also be remembered. Wine, 
and every species of stimulus, affect the mind through 
the medium of the body. Even so mechanical a force 
as that of electricity, if made to operate upon us, ex- 
cite in us, according to our several characters, feel- 
ings of surprise, fear, aversion, or curiosity. If these 
remarks be true, as regards such powers as act only 
partially on the nervous system, how much more 
must they apply to an agency which stimulates not 
locally, but generally, the very capacities of sensa- 
tion ! Other agents affect the nerves circuitously, 
through the intervention of modifying organs, but 
this, removing out of the way, as has been seen, the 
barriers of the external senses, proceeds at once and 
directly to the seat of internal sensibility. Its effects 
also have been shown to be as durable as they are 
potent, not operating, like electricity, which gives a 
shock and is gone, but manifesting itself, when once 
set in action, for a length of time, so as to demon- 
strate that the nervous system can be charged with it 
in a very permanent and peculiar manner. What 
singular results may not be expected from the opera- 
tion of an agency like this ! 

That mesmerism, then, should develope certain 
mental phenomena in those whom it influences, is no 
proof whatever that it may not originate physically. 

Neither, if it should appear to affect all men 
diversely, and some not at all, is the reality of its ex- 
istence to be called in question. All agencies in na- 
ture are neither electric nor irresistible, and we can- 
not but allow that there is a class of powers which 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 419 

act upon man constitutionally rather than mechani- 
cally, and so are modified by accidental circumstances 
of health or temperament. Even should we ulti- 
mately be forced to rank mesmerism amongst these, 
we should by no means have annulled its agency ; we 
should but have ascertained correctly its specific 
character. 

Still keeping in view that its influence is more pe- 
culiarly directed upon the nervous system, w r e shall 
learn to appreciate it justly, and. even should it ap- 
pear hopelessly irregular, accept that irregularity as 
the condition of its existence. How, indeed, can we 
expect from mesmerism the constancy of a mere 
mechanical impulse? Its diversities have their 
origin in the verj essence of our nature. The agency, 

which we have to examine, is almost identified with 

man. the ever-changeful — the infinitely varied. No 
two constitutions are alike, and the nervous system 

exhibits a separate character in every separate per- 
son. It*, then, we consider that the action of medical 
remedies, or of material substances, even though they 
may not directly affect the economy of the nerves, is 
greatly modified by the temperament of the indi- 
vidual to whom they are applied, so that certain 
idiosyncracies will convert a means of cure or a whole- 
some nutriment into a poison ; above all, if we re- 
flect on the varied peculiarities of the senses of various 
men. causing that which is a pleasing odor to one to 
become an overpowering torture to another (as in 
the case of the Roman women, who swoon at flowers 
and perfumes), and that which is discord to certain 
ears to sound as harmony to those which are differ- 



420 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ■> 

ently constituted : thus reasoning, we must perceive 
that an influence, which should act immediately and 
generally on the nervous system, would, of necessity, 
exhibit somewhat of a distinctive character, in every 
separate case. 

It is, above all, of importance to remember that 
the variability of the recipients does by no means 
prove the agent itself variable. How would you 
that the effects, even though coming from a single 
and permanent cause, should be similar, seeing that 
the subjects who manifest them are diverse ? Does 
not the air produce different sounds from different 
instruments of music, though it be a single known 
and permanent agent? 

Even should a man be altogether insusceptible of 
the mesmeric influence, he has surely no just cause 
for disavowing its reality. Is he not, perhaps, insen- 
sible to the operation of many other powers by which 
a number of his fellow-beings are invariably affected ? 
May it not be argued that mortal temperaments — 
from the phlegmatic to the sanguine — differ as 
essentially as water and mercury, and that as little 
should we expect men of opposite constitutions to be 
similarly affected by mesmerism, as that the above- 
named substances should freeze at the same degree of 
temperature ? We should also remember that he, 
who is at present insensible to the force, may, at 
some future time, obtain a personal proof of its efficacy. 
We are not always in the same frame, nor always 
capable of being affected by the same causes. An 
exposure to cold, which we brave with impunity 
to-day, may be our death to-morrow, and the dose of 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 421 

laudanum, or of mercury, which, when we suffer, is 
but a blessed relief from pain, may, at another time, 
be to us deleterious or even fatal. That these ob- 
servations hold good as respects mesmerism has been 
proved in the recorded case of M. Itard, one of the 
members of the French Academy of Medicine, who, 
in 1826, i xperienced no effect from mesmeric treat- 
ment, but in the year following was relieved by it 
from headache and chronic rheumatism ; and is it 
always BO certain that they, who will not own even to 
themselves that they are affected by an influence they 
despise, are in truth so proof against it? One thing 
at least 1 know. Aware by experience of the ex- 
ternal indications of mesmeric affection, 1 have been 
able to detect them in some who professed to feel 
nothing unusual under the mesmeric processes. It 
may also be suspected thai they. who. like a certain 

fri( nd of mine, commemorated in these paps, en- 
deavor to solve a problem, during mesmerisation, do 
in fact experience something ot* the agency to which 

they oppose BUch stent methods of resistance. 

Let us but -rant to mesmerism tha' license.' which 
we concede to every agent upon an examination of 

which we desire to enter. 

In all physical sciences, which are based on expe- 
riment and observation, it must be granted that the 

most important phenomena depend for their repro- 
duction on the co-presence of a number of condi- 
tion-, difficult to be obtained separately, harder still 
to be assembled and concentrated in one general re- 
sult. If this be true as regards physical science, it 
still more forcibly applies to a science confessedly 
36 



422 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. S 

mental as well as physical. In mesmerism we have a 
task incomparably more difficult than to resolve the 
light into its definite and primal elements, to study 
the formation of a crystal, or to superintend the ac- 
tion of a voltaic battery ; we are called upon to dis- 
sect the mind with all its delicate and fleeting hues, 
and to unfold the caprices and the varieties of the 
human constitution. 

Under these circumstances, when a mesmeric phe- 
nomenon has been observed, how many causes, im- 
possible in the shifting train of casualties to be sum- 
moned up at will, must be reunited before it can re- 
cur ! The instrument with which we have to deal is 
too delicate to be calculated upon as one would cal- 
culate on mathematical certainties. The powers 
which we have to investigate are amongst the most 
occult in nature, to be traced only by a few of their 
scattered, but most extraordinary effects. Add to this 
that observation respecting the influence in question is 
yet in its infancy ; the relation between its forces, 
whether negative or positive, is yet a mystery ; its 
statics have not yet been ascertained ; but yet, and in 
spite of all these drawbacks (and this is much to say), 
the reader may gather from former portions of this 
work that the irregularity of mesmerism is to be un- 
derstood with a limitation. It is of degree rather 
than kind. The diversity consists in the proportion 
wherein the agent affects various persons, — in the 
extent of the scale, and the fineness of the grada- 
tions, as they ascend from effects which are almost 
imperceptible to phenomena which exhibit the full 
mesmeric force. The friends of mesmerism, per- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 423 

haps, need only claim for it the same experimental 
patience that is required in examining the properties 
of light, where a cloud that passes over the solar rays 
may prevent those beautiful appearances, which are 
dependent upon their polarization, from captivating 
the gazer's i 

These views of the action of the mesmeric medium 
are not. be it remembered, presented as complete, 
but rather as such as are forced upon us by the re- 
cency of the discovery, and the consequently imper- 
fect state of observation respecting it. I have not 
forgotten that the great agencies of nature stand in a 
two-fold relation to man. namely, physical and physi- 
co-inathematical. and are therefore capable of being 
considered in a two-fold point of view ; that is, 
either as they aflecl all men alike, mechanically, or 
each man iii a different manner, constitutionally, 

lint I contend that the one effect IS not less real than 
the other, and perhaps that which presents the most 

variety is not the least interesting to be considered, 

though it is with the certain and the steadfast that 
Bcience is chiefly occupied; If, before the analysis 

of the atmosphere had been complete, and its laws 
of density or temperature established, a man had 
asserted, because of its various effects on the various 
constitutions of men. that there was no atmosphere, 
how plainly ridiculous would have been the induc- 
tion ! — or, if a pseudo-philosopher, in a sort of 
foolish rage and spite against himself, were known 
formerly to have renounced as flat, stale, and unpro- 
fitable, the study of the constitutional effects of the 
atmosphere upon his fellow-beings, because he could 



424 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

not reduce them to mechanical laws, how manifestly 
erring and absurd would his conduct now appear to 
us. 

Experience of the past should teach us not to de- 
spair of seeing the statics and dinamics of the mes- 
meric force plainly laid down. Who, in the early 
periods of science, would have ventured to predict 
the invention of a balance, whereby the magnetic 
action could be reduced to weight and measure ? 
Look at the history of magnetical discoveries ! What 
patience — what erroneous guesses — what feeble 
dawnings of truth — what lessons of hope are there ! 
The knowledge of magnetical effects is as old, at 
least, as the era of Homer, by whom they are dis- 
tinctly referred to ; but it is less than a century ago ' 
that Michell established the true law of magnetic 
action : and mesmerism has not yet completed its 
seventieth year, — a measure of existence which the 
Psalmist has assigned as the period of one man's life ! 
Is this a sufficient space for the development of a 
subject the most fertile and the most vast, because 
the most intimately connected with man ? 

This, at least, even in the present state of mes- 
meric science, may be affirmed, that, considered as a 
force, the agency betrays no slight indications of its 
affinity with mechanical powers, and that certain 
circumstances regarding it bring to us nearly a full 
conviction that its effects are dependent on a certain 
invariable proportion between the mesmeric force of 
the individual who dispenses, and that of him who 

1 In 1750. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 4:25 

submits to receive the influence. What that propor- 
tion is, once ascertained (and how can this be but by 
repeated observation?), would reduce mesmerism to 
a law. and to a certainty. Its mental and remedial 
effects will indeed necessarily always continue to be 
varied according to the character and temperament 
of its patients, hut its purely physical agency might 
be brought within conditions, perhaps narrower and 
more simple than we can now conceive. Supposing 
(as xuue now deem) the vital action to be electric, 
that which is called a man's nervous force, or consti- 
tution, would depend on the possession of a certain 
original measure of the electric fluid. Were this 
found to be the CMC (inv idea may raise a smile), a 

neurometer, or instrument to ascertain the nervous 
power of a person, might give to mesmerism the pre- 
cision which science requires. Who would have 
thought, at one tiin<\ a DM -a-ure of magnetism pos- 
sible ? 

My suggestion maybe deemed absurd; but this 
will not alter the facts of mesmerism. At present we 
are only acquainted with the general result, and not 
with the elements that compose it; but this is no 
more a proof that it is not composed of elements, 
than the ancient ignorance what water was could have 
demonstrated that it was not composed of two airs 
in certain proportions. 

I will state two or three cases out of the many 
that have inclined me to think that mesmerism is a 
question of proportional force. A friend of mine at 
Cambridge was susceptible of being influenced by 
myself, but transiently and imperfectly, while, on the 
36* 



426 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

other hand, he was at once and invariably brought 
into the mesmeric state by being subjected to the 
action of a young fellow-student, who (as to the rest) 
used no art in his manipulations, and merely imitated 
rudely my proceedings and gestures. Again : the 
brother of a celebrated sculptor at Rome was always 
mesmerised by me in a few minutes without difficulty, 
but to other influence he was by no means so sus- 
ceptible. On one occasion, before a large party at 
Rome, I instructed a distinguished artist in the 
necessary movements, and set him down to mesmer- 
ise the gentleman alluded to, precisely as I was ac- 
customed to do. No result, however, at the end of 
half an hour had ensued. I then took the patient's 
hands myself, and in a very few minutes he was 
thrown into a deep mesmeric slumber. Other per- 
sons tried the same experiment with a similar result. 

E. A., whom I could mesmerise in a few seconds, 
was operated upon for an hour by another person, 
who, in other cases, had displayed immense mesmeric 
power, without experiencing any effect whatever. 

An interesting anecdote, related to me by Dr. 
Chapelain of Paris, corroborates the above. 

An English lady, whom he was treating mesmeri- 
cally, continued, after many days, insensible to his 
influence. Her son, a child of about ten years of 
age, who was present while the doctor mesmerised, 
exclaimed one day, " I think I could make mamma 
sleep. Will you let me try ? " Dr. Chapelain, cu- 
rious to see what the little fellow would do, laugh- 
ingly consented. He was surprised at the gravity 
and skill with which the boy imitated all the pro- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 427 

cesses which he himself had employed, but still more 
surprised to behold that in ten minutes the patient 
was thrown into a mesmeric slumber. 

From facts like these we cannot but conclude that 
it is not the strength of the mesmeriser, but the pro- 
portion between the respective strengths of mesmeri- 
ser and patient, which ensures success; and that the 
less <»r more on cither side would indifferently prevent 
a perfect result. To ascertain these relations seems 
to me to be the great end and object of research as 
regards mesmerism at present. In this labor, let us 
not be less active and enduring than men of science 
have shown themselves tor many a meaner object. 
What can !>«' so ungrateful a toil as that of endeav- 
oring to reduce the weather to a law. and the varia- 
tion- of atmospheric temperature to a certainty? 

Yet tlii< ha- been attempted, and i- attempted still. 
And how: by the accumulation of observations, 
which, since art ifl Ion- and life is short, must rather 
serve a- ;i valuable bequest to posterity than as a profit 
to ourselves. All that we have yet ascertained on 
this point, and that is much, is, that the sum of each 
year's weather and temperature is very nearly alike; 
that, as Whewell expresses it, " there is an invaria- 
ble result of the most variable quantities." A simi- 
lar discovery respecting the apparently lawless agency 
of mesmerism will. I am certain, reward the perse- 
verance of those who continue to observe its pheno- 
mena with honesty and patience. 

Having shown that the mesmeric agency may truly 
be ranked amongst physical influences, and that it is 
as real an action of matter as any other which is made 



428 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM, -s 

known to us by visible effects, I proceed to state such 
additional particulars respecting the agency as I have 
ascertained by careful and cautious experiment. 

That which I have now unequivocally to affirm of 
the mesmeric medium is, that it is primarily set in 
motion by the human mind. 

I am aware that, in asserting this, I am committing 
Use majeste against the French goddess of reason, 
who has banished the mind altogether out of her do- 
minions ; but for justification I must appeal to a higher 
sovereign, Truth, namely, under whose aegis I would, 
if possible, take refuge from the storms which are 
probably brewing against me. " What ! v it will be 
said, " do you render your mesmeric agency depend- 
ent on the shifting human mind, on the variable hu- 
man will, and yet claim for it the character and con- 
stancy of a physical influence ? What power over 
physics have the mind and will ? When was thought 
ever known to set matter in motion ? " These ques- 
tions I dare not answer, fallacious though they be, on 
my own authority. I am a mesmeriser, and my rea- 
soning will be suspected. Let me, then, appeal to 
the great intellect, which long ago and unanswerably 
solved the inquiry, " Whence we derive our ideas of 
power ? " From Locke's splendid chapter on this 
subject I select as much as is necessary for my pur- 
pose. 

" Bodies, by our senses, do not afford us so clear 
and distinct an idea of active power as w r e have from 
reflection of the operation of our minds ; for all power 
relating to action, and there being but two sorts of 
action, whereof we have any idea, viz : thinking and 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 429 

motion, let us consider whence we have the clearest 
ideas of the powers which produce these actions ; — 
1. Of thinking. Body affords us no idea at all; it 
is only from reflection that we have that. 2. Neither 
have we from body any idea of the beginning of mo- 
tion. A body at rest affords us no idea of any active 
power to move, and when it is set in motion itself, 
that motion is rather a passion than an action in it; 
for when the ball obeys the stroke of a billiard stick, 
it is not any action of the ball, but bare passion ; 
also when, impulse, it sets another ball in motion that 
lav in it< why. it only communicates the motion it 
had received from another, and loses in itself so much 
as the other receivedj which gives us but a very ob- 
scure idea of an active power of moving in body, 
whilst we observe it only to transfer, but not produce 
any motion ; for it is but a very obscure id a of power 
which reaches not the production of the action, but 
the continuation of the passion. 

"The idea of the beginning of motion we have 
only from reflection on what passes in ourselves, where 
we lind. by experience, that barely by willing it, barely 
by a thought of the mind, we can move the parts of 
our bodies, which were before at rest. * * # 

" This, at least, I think evident, that we find in 
ourselves a power to begin or forbear, continue or end 
several actions of our minds, and motions of our body, 
barely by a thought, or preference of the mind, or- 
dering, or, as it were, commanding the doing, or not 
doing such or such a particular action : — this power, 
which the mind has thus to order the consideration 
of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it, or to 



430 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, 
and vice versa in any particular instance, is that which 
we call the will." 

If we allow (and how can we deny ?) the truth of 
the above reflections, we must perceive that not 
merely our very idea of motion is derived from the 
mind's operations, but that reasoning, as alone we 
can reason, from what we know, we must conclude 
that all motion whatever originates with mind and 
with mind alone. And why start at the notion that 
the mind, in mesmerism, is the acting force ? Do we 
know any other ? Mind and motion, as cause and 
consequence, are indissolubly connected, the only 
real antecedent and consequent that can be shown in 
perfect juxtaposition, and demonstrated to us truly 
by our self-consciousness. Besides, shall we, who 
may be said to create to ourselves all we see by 
thought, doubt of the power of the human mind? 
One should think that, above all persons, the man of 
science, who bases all mechanics on the principle of 
the inertia of matter, and yet cannot but admit " that 
there is probably no portion of inorganic matter that 
is not in a state of relative motion," must be aware of 
the necessity of quite another than a material force to 
produce all this action in naturally quiescent bodies. 
Even Descartes (as Pascal says) was forced to bring 
in God to set the world in motion, though, had it 
been feasible, he would have shoved him altogether 
out of his philosophy. The principle once admitted 
that motion originates with mind, it is plain that such 
motions as occur in the mesmeric medium, and are 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 431 

thence transferred to a human body, are primarily 
produced by mind ; — in other words, by will. 

Why should we be startled at the expression ? Is 
the will a nullity ? Has it no force, no prerogatives ? 
Let us consider what every day and every hour our 
will effects, merely in controling and wielding mat- 
ter. How accurately we move the complicated 
mechanism of our limbs, through the impulsions of 
our volition ! The least disobedience or want of 
pliability on their part would mar the slightest of 
our bodily actions. Let us. with Dr. Maculloch, 
take the cases of archery and slinking. "It requires 
little reflection to see that, under the complicated 
action of so many muscles, the problem to be solved 
i- so intricate that DO mathematician could ever hope 
to assign what was necessary to produce a result, 
which is as certainly as it is rapidly affected, without 
any calculation. * * 

u Hut the precision of muscular action becomes 
much more wonderful when we refer to the cause, 
and ask in what manner a definite quantity of cohe- 
rive attraction and also various definite and unequal 
quantities in succession can be transmitted through 
a nerve, while this too is done by an act of the will, 
yet of will merely knowing what it desires, not what 
it performs." ' 

Our knowledge that the will acts, yet our igno- 
rance how it acts, on matter, should prepare us to 
receive, without a dogmatic denial at least, proofs 
of an extension in its capacities and its sphere. If, 

1 Dr. Maculloch, on the Attributes of God. 



432 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. - 

in some mysterious way, I actuate another, it is 
scarcely more wonderful than that I actuate myself. 
It is true that the latter comes within the range of 
my every day experience ; but can I any more com- 
prehend it ? 

How great a force the will either has, or wields, 
may be almost measured off to our senses in a very 
simple but striking manner. 

Let two covered vessels precisely alike, the one 
empty, the other full of some heavy substance, such 
as leaden bullets, be placed before a person. Let 
him first lift the full vessel, and let him then be told 
to raise the empty one, w T ith an understanding that 
it is of equal weight with the first. The person do- 
ing this will put into the action so much unnecessary 
force, from the expectation of being about to lift a 
great weight, that his baffled vigor will, in its re- 
action, cause quite a painful concussion in the mus- 
cles of the arm. Now, could that force, which, as it 
were, returns upon himself, be directed outwards, it 
is plain that it might produce a very powerful and 
peculiar action in the media wherewith we are sur- 
rounded. And wherefore not directed outwards ? 
This at least we know, that the will is really the 
primary agent which enables us to move all bodies 
foreign to and apart from ourselves. In these cases, 
indeed, it acts through intermediate agencies which 
are visible to us. But there is nothing whatever to 
render it impossible that the mind should act some- 
times by unseen, yet even more patent intermediaries 
than the accustomed. After all, what astonishes us 
in mesmerism is not that the mind is shown capable 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 433 

of producing motion, but that it is exhibited produc- 
ing motion in a different way, as we conceive, from 
that with which our experience is familiar. That 
the mind should originate a series of motions of which 
we cannot behold certain of the intervening links (I 
speak of cases in which the mesmeriser influences his 
patient from a distance), — this is the true ground of 
our wonder and incredulity. Yet, in fact, the very 
same thing occurs in our commonest experience. 
When I move one of my fingers, I am only acquaint- 
ed with the first fact and the last in a sequence of 
events, the intermediate circumstances of which are 
hidden from my knowledge, and which are, proba- 
bly, very numerous. Some of the hidden links in 
the series'l knew from reason. From the anatomist 
I learn, that Bay mind, in the first instance, moves a 
portion of my brain (for certain injuries to the brain 
render voluntary motion impossible) ; that this again 
communicates an impulse to a nerve — (for cut the 
nerve and the impulse reaches not the muscle) that 
then again a muscle is moved, and finally the finger. 
The simplest voluntary motion, then, is but an im- 
pulse, originating with mind in the first place, and 
thence transferred through a series of atoms. There 
is a sequence of changes, nothing more ; some of 
which are known to us — others not. There is (to 
use the language of Locke) but one real action, yet 
many passions, or communicated motions. And 
what is mesmerism but this ? The same definition 
suits motion whether produced mesmerically, or nor- 
mally. The same circumstances attend both. Again, 
even should we pursue motion beyond the limits of 
37 



434 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

our own bodies, we shall find that there are invisible 
links in all the impulsions which we communicate to 
matter. The philosopher knows that we are not in 
real contact with anything which we appear to 
touch — that there is always something invisible be- 
tween us and the object that we handle. 

Again : do I not, by every motion of my body, 
change the relative position of the atoms of the media 
that surround me ? Do I not displace the air, cause 
various motion in the waves of light, and influence 
nature to a distance around me, which it were vain 
to attempt to calculate ? The wonder, then, seems 
to be — not that the mind should produce changes 
in surrounding objects — but that, being itself " the 
fountain-head of motion," it should not move matter 
more forcibly and generally. Doubtless it would be 
so, had not the all-wise Ruler of creation confined 
the human mind within necessary limits. Could the 
will sway the material as it does the immaterial 
world, what bounds would there be to the tyrant's 
caprice, to the conqueror's ambition? Mountains 
would crumble as a dream, and oceans be dried up 
at our bidding. A Napoleon would " make a sop of 
all the solid globe." These ideas are not so extrava- 
gant as his who doubts of the power of the human 
will. By that alone we do great things ; by that 
alone we conquer kingdoms, or ourselves ; by that 
alone we achieve the hourly miracle of moving mat- 
ter, united with, or extraneous to ourselves. Is the 
will, then, a nullity, whose influence is to be excluded 
from our consideration when we treat on any subject 
which nearly concerns man ? 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 435 

Let us now proceed, perhaps with fewer preju- 
dices, to consider the proofs before us, that in mes- 
merism it is the mind which originates the impulse. 
It is true that, in general cases, the mesmeriser em- 
ploys visible and physical means to produce his 
effects. He is either placed in contact with the per- 
son he desires to influence, or he makes use of cer- 
tain looks and gestures, which, to those who regard 
only the superficial and the visible, may appear to 
be the moving causes of the impression produced on 
the other person. But let us remember that even 
the most careless of our looks and gestures do really 
spring from mind and will, acting, indeed, with vari- 
ous degrees of force yet still always with a certain 
force. -\<>\\ evefl as respects these outward mani- 
festations of an acting mind, I have invariably found 
that mesmeric effects were always in exact propor- 
tion to the degree of voluntary effort I put into the 
performance. This was more especially the case as 
r» garded the 1 action of the eve. When my patient's 
eyes were closed, and he therefore had no means of 
knowing what I was about, 1 have still found that, 
the more of actwi ui/zt/iLi- I employed, the greater 
Was the effect produced. The necessity of giving an 
undivided attention to my work was, of course, most 
palpable in the first lew times of mesmerising a per- 
son ; for it is evident that the more the patient's sen- 
sibility was developed under successive mesmerisa- 
tion, the less force he would require to be used in 
influencing him ; consequently the less mental effort 
would be required on my part. This is a remark to 
which it is of importance to attend, for some persons 



436 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

in very advanced stages of mesmeric sensibility will 
be affected by gestures in which the mind of the per- 
former would seem to have little share ; that it can 
have no share therein I trust I have demonstrated to 
be impossible. 

Yet even when acting on a patient so accustomed 
to my influence as was E. A., I found that I by no 
means mesmerised him so well as usual on days when 
my mind was preoccupied with other matters. He 
Was himself peculiarly sensitive to any remission of 
my attention towards him, and would frequently say 
to me (and always with justice), " You arc not think- 
ing of me just now." The poor blind German boy 
used similarly, and with cqua.1 correctness, to com- 
plain of my ceasing to influence him properly ; and 
this, from the absence of one of his senses, and that 
the most observant, is testimony the more remarkable 
and uncorrupted. 

A very certain proof that, when attention remits, 
there is a remission also of mesmeric power, was af- 
forded me also in the course of some experiments, 
which Professor Agassiz, of Neufchatel* permitted 
me to try upon himself. In these I was of course 
peculiarly desirous of concentrating all my attention 
upon the effects to be produced on a man of learn- 
ing and of science. The very circumstances of the 
case compelled me to exert my mind in an undivided 
manner. But one evening the non-arrival of expected 
letters from home forced me into another train of 
feeling, and, during the mesmeric processes, I could 
not prevent my thoughts from occasionally straying 
from the scene before me into anxious surmises as to the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 437 

cause of the silence of my friends. My patient, al- 
though he had his eves closed, and his limbs para- 
lyzed in the torpor of the mesmeric slumber, was 
not slow to perceive the wanderings of my attention, 
and. although I was at the time engaged in the mes- 
meric processes, to all outward appearance as actively 
as usual, called nut to me constantly and coincidently 
with the remission of jny thoughts — " Vou intluence 
me no longer. You arc nof exerting yourself/' 

<)n another occasion L was convinced in a manner 
the most odd. and even comic, how great is the in- 
fluence of the will in directing the impulses of the 
mesmeric medium. 1 should hesitate about relating 

the Story w< re it not that, ill a new science, every 

thin- has it- importance, and the least studied effects 
are often die m<>M valuable and sure. Traveling in 

a Btage coach in England, with three other inside 

passengers (one of them at Cambridge friend, to whom 

I i an appeal tor the truth of the relation). 1 fell into 
the following train of thought : — " If mesmeric ef- 
fect- occur only through certain contact and gestures* 
Why i- it that men never mesmerise each other una- 
wares i At a public meeting, in a church, in a the- 
atre in all places where human beings congregate, 
there i- plenty of the mesmeric intluence going about 

unappropriated* Why i- it that this does not take 
effect, and that no one should sleep in such circum- 
stances, unless the orators arc prosy, and the play 
Stupid enough to act a- a soporific} Surely this is 
because the intluence requires a will to concentrate 
it and to give it a particular direction, before it can 
individually operate. Now, here am I, in a most fe- 
37* 



438 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. - 

vorable position for mesmerising the person opposite 
to me. His knees and feet are in contact with mine 
— in the true mesmeric position. At present he does 
not look sleepy in the least ; and up to the present 
moment the idea of mesmerising him has not entered 
my head. Let me see if this want of the idea is the 
true cause why I have not hitherto affected him. If, 
by a silent exertion of my will, I can now, from wide 
awake, bring him fast asleep in a very short period, 
the relation between cause and effect will be, I think, 
pretty well established." " Sur ces entrefaites." as 
the French say, I began mentally to exert my volition, 
and to fix my attention on my unconscious patient. 
From time to time I looked at him mesmericallv. but 
watched my opportunity, when his own attention, 
being turned elsewhere, permitted me to stare at him, 
without the fear of being challenged. In about ten 
minutes the charm began to operate. My victim's 
eyes kept reverting unconsciously, as it were, to my 
face, which, however, I turned away whenever I saw 
him looking at me, and at length lie began to shut 
them with that slow and peculiar motion which is in- 
dicative of mesmerisation. They did not, however, 
close, but remained more than half open, becoming 
perfectly fixed, and, as it were dead, displaying the 
whites in a manner which by no means contributed 
to embellish a physiognomy naturally none of the 
handsomest. 

Behold, then, my man asleep ; so soundly, indeed, 
that the coach stopped, and horses were changed 
without his being in any way disturbed from his mes- 
meric nap. When we were again in motion I began 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 439 

to be agitated by some strange doubts, whether my 
will would be found as effectual to end, as it had been 
to create, the spell which held the slumberer, who 
always remained in the same position as at first, with 
hi< eves more dead than ever. As I had soon to quit 
the coach. I really feared that my sleeper, unawakened, 
might follow me. attached by mesmeric attraction to 
my side. The question of the will's supremacy was 
now to be tried to the utmost. First, without any 
effort of volition directed tb the end of awakening 
my patient. I stirred about, spoke aloud, and let down 
the window next me with a rattle ; my fellow -passen- 
did not awake. I then, concentrating my will 
on the one idea of dissipating the mesmeric influence, 

t forward with something of that motion of my 
hands which, in QSUal circumstances, accompanied 

the idea. Immediately my patient began to stir, move 

his eyes, and rub them. Marin- -till rather wildly, and 

in a confused manner muttering that he really thought 
he must have been asl< ep« 

1 now proceed to relate some more serious exper- 
iments tried at Antwerp, on Anna M , relating 

to the influence of thought and will on the mesmeric 

medium, and its power of communicating impulses 
1 i b distai* 

The patient just mentioned was. it will he remem- 
d. in a -late df mesmeric >< nihility and relation 
with myself, which successive mesmermngs had car- 
ried to a very high pitch. Yet by my mere bodily 

presence Anna M was in no way affected. 

Unless I mesmerised her with intention, no effect 
was produced. Never had I led her to conceive it 



440 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM, -s 

possible that I could mesmerise her in any than the 
usual way, that is, by contact <md gestures. She had 
never read any books on mesmerism. She had no 
preconceived notions on the subject. All being thus 
propitious to the essay of a pure experiment, I con- 
certed with my family what was to be done on a 

certain evening, when Anna M was coming to 

take tea with us. According to our arrangements, I 

pretended to leave the room, while Anna M 

was engaged in conversation with my wife on a sofa 
near the fire; but taking advantage of a large screen 
that hid the door entirely from view, and which 
had always stood in the same place — that is at the 
very farther end of an apartment twenty-six feet in 
length — I shut myself into the room instead of out 
of it. I then tried to concentrate my thoughts on 
my sleepwaker, and to mesmerise mentally. At first 
I found this difficult, but at length I succeeded in 
bringing myself into the same frame and action of 
mind which usually accompanied my employment of 
outward means, when mesmerising. Then, and not 

till then, I suddenly heard Anna M (breaking 

off in the very midst of an animated conversation) 
exclaim — " Oh, where is he ? What is he doing ? " 
Directly after, the concerted signal, which was to 
inform me that my patient slept, was given ; and, 

advancing into the room, I saw Anna M as 

completely mesmerised as ever she had been by con- 
tact and gestures. In the notes taken at the time, 
by one of our party, of this transaction, I find, that 
after this, the patient's first words were, — 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 441 

P. — M Why did you go ? You only wanted to 
deceive me." 

M. — " Only to magnetise you from a distance." 

P. — **Yes. You can magnetise me now from 
any distance. " 

Anxious to try 1 second experiment of the same 
nature; with the above, yet aware that, if I took the 
same means; the experiment could not be pure (since 
the patient forewarned might, on my apparently 
leaving the mom. imagine me still in the apartment), 
I agreed again on certain measures with my family, 
winch took effect as follows — 

After the interval of a few days, during which I 
mesmerised Anna occasionally in the usual manner^ 
T. on her coming one evening to Bee us, was found 
deeply absorbed over a volume of Wordsworth's 
poems; winch, after the first greeting^ were over, I 
continued to read, while Anna wai busily imparting 

to her kind friend, my wile, all her little plans for 

bettering the condition of her family — her hopes 
and fean for the coming winter. While this went 
on I was trying to withdraw my mind from the book, 
on which my eyes, shaded by my hand, were fixed, 
and to concentrate my thoughts on my patient. 
This, however, was no easy task ; Wtirdsworth is 
not an author to be quitted with indifference. At 
length, by dint of repeated efforts, I acquired the 
proper frame of mind for mesmerising; and, coinci- 
dendy with my success, Anna, as before, suddenly 
broke off in the midst of a sentence, and exclaimed, 
" Oh, he 's magnetising me ! " (we called the thing 



442 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

then by its old name) — falling back at the same 
time on the sofa in a profound mesmeric slumber. 

The third trial that I made to mesmerise this pa- 
tient from a distance was still more remarkable and 
decisive. 

One evening, when sitting with my family, the 
idea occurred to me, — " Could I mesmerise Anna 

M there, as I then was, while she was in her 

own house ? " to which I knew she was just then 
confined by slight indisposition. Acting on this 
thought, I begged all the party present to note the 
hour (it was exactly nine o'clock), and to bear me 
witness that then and there I attempted a mesmeric 
experiment. 

This time I endeavored to bring before my imagi- 
nation very vividly the person of my sleepwaker, and 
even aided the concentration of my thoughts by the 
usual mesmeric gestures ; I also, at the end of an 
hour, said, "I will now awake Anna," and used 
appropriate gestures. We now awaited with more 
curiosity than confidence the result of this process. 

The following morning Anna made her appear- 
ance, just as we were at breakfast, exclaiming, " Oh, 
sir, did you magnetise me last night ? About nine 
o'clock I fell asleep, and mother and sisters say they 
could not wake me with all their shaking of me. and 
they were quite frightened ; but after an hour I woke 
of myself; and I think from all this that pay sleep 
must have been magnetic. It also did me a great 
deal of good, for I felt quite recovered from my cold 
after it. After a natural sleep I never feel so much 
refreshed. When I sleep for an hour in magnetism. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 443 

it is as if I had rested a whole night." These were 

the words of Anna If , noted down at the time 

as accurately as possible. 

Unless the reader will do me the honor to believe 
that 1 tricked my family, and was in concert with a 
poor honest-hearted girl to deceive everyone, I know 

not what he can say to statements such as the above. 

They are facts; to the accuracy of which more than 
one person will pledge all the credit of their in- 
it y. 
To me, who think at least that I behold clearly 
the principle of mesmerism, they appear not so won- 
drous, as doubtless to those who have not yet thought 

out the subject they will and must appear. Impulses 

conveyed to a distance cease to be miracles the mo- 
ment tii. re i- b communicating medium made visible. 
That news should be conveyed from Dover to York 
in a few seconds may seem a mighty marvel to the 
ignorant ; but to those who are aware of the nature 
of the telegraph] a mere common occurrence. Let 
us not be so near the vulgar as to be astonished at 
effects from causes to as invisible ; let us not gape at 
the ascending or descending deities, as if they really 
Boated in the air, only because our vision cannot de- 
tect the strings and wires by which they are guided 
and supported. The mechanism once revealed to 
reason's very thing appears easy and natural. 

But. if we only rest in what we #ee, we must live in 
wonder and pt rish in our ignorance. 

The following considerations may tend to recon- 
cile us to the phenomenon of thought giving ten- 
dency to matter, and propagating its impulses to a 
distance. 



444 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. -> 

Mental action produces motion in the brain, for 
the sensible fatigue in that organ, consequent upon 
intense thinking, proves that during thought it has 
been exercised in a real and physical manner. The 
materialist even will confess this, and more energet- 
ically, for he will affirm that motions of the brain 
produce thought. Let it be so, if he will ; that makes 
no difference in our argument. Motion of the brain 
is still, and under all circumstances, allowed to be the 
accompaniment of thought, either as its antecedent 
or consequent. Can that motion be possibly insu- 
lated amidst the connected mechanism of the uni- 
verse, where one thing hinges on another, and where 
the touching of a single spring is but the commence- 
ment of a series of actions (." wheel within wheel 
involved"), which may reach to the throne of Om- 
nipotence itself? Can any one motion live to itself 
alone, die where it was born, and be bounded by the 
substance in which it has originated? 

Granting that, which few will, in the present day 
be disposed to deny, that there is one pervading me- 
dium throughout nature, infinitely elastic and im- 
pressionable, it follows, as a consequence, that our 
thoughts must necessarily, in agitating the brain, 
agitate also the great ocean in which animate and 
inanimate matter has its being, with which we are 
in partial relation, with which God is in infinite re- 
lation. 

Let philosophers pursue their own views to their 
termination, and subscribe to the consequences of 
their own theories, and I shall be content. He who 
adopts the undulatory hypothesis, and contends for 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 445 

the existence of a pervading ether, is already more 
than half way on his road to mesmerism. 

These reflections may serve to introduce another 
class of mesmeric phenomena, which appear miracu* 
lous only when insulated and taken apart from the 
proposition that Mind must in its every action im- 
press tin motion on surrounding matter. 

It has been said that persons in certain states, 
eith( r mesmeric or akin to the mesmeric, can be- 
come aware of the thoughts of others without the 

usual communication of speech. Bertrand, who (be 

it remembered) wrote against mesmerism in the later 

>f his life, relates an amusing story to this 

ory in which he professes his full belief, 
for be knew the j d in it : — A little 

girl <>f feboofl ten jrean erf age fell into a singular 

^normal sensibility. In her tits of auto- 
iiH smerism, she alarmed her family !>\ proclaiming 
aloud in them all the subjects of their thoughts. She 

would >a\ t<> her Bister, " You are now meditating 
whether \ ou Bhould or should not go to such a place, to 
meet such a person; I advise you to stay quietly 
at home;' 3 or. to her mother. " Do not ponder why 
papa stays out so late-; it will do you no good." 
These revelations were at times not a little awkward 

and mal-apropos. and so the poor little girl was 
thanked for her discernment, but Voted to be under 
the influence of a deluding and wicked spirit. For 
the purpose of exorcising this familiar, so much more 
malevolent than that of Socrato. the young patient 
was committed to the care of a pious community of 

nuns, with directions that much prayer and holy water 

38 



446 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

should be spent upon her ; but, in the convent, mat- 
ters went on much worse. The holy water threw the 
patient into convulsions, and (still more horrible) 
whenever a metal cross was laid on her breast, she 
threw the precious ensign of redemption from her with 
symptoms of the greatest aversion. The pious sister- 
hood, though not aware of the fact that the touch of 
metal powerfully influences persons in certain states of 
sensibility, happened, however, to exchange the metal 
cross for one of wood, which, having been blessed by 
the pope, was supposed to be of peculiar efficacy ; and 
lo ! in proof of that efficacy, the little girl allowed the 
relic to remain quietly on her breast. This was a most 
favorable omen ; but, alas ! the evil spirit was not to 
be thus tamed ! — the great, the terrible symptom of 
diabolic agency broke out in fresh vigor ; for the 
patient began to proclaim the thoughts of those 
around her. When irritated by the kind but mis- 
taken officiousness of the nuns, she was especially for- 
midable in that way, so formidable, indeed, that at 
length she completely controled and governed the 
saintly community. " Sister Agatha/' she would ex- 
claim, " you had better not bring that cross here, or 
I'll tell why it was you nailed your ear so close to the 
key-hole of the abbess's parlor." " Sister Ursula, do 
not force me to say any more paternosters, or all the 
world shall know what you were thinking of in your 
cell last Tuesday." 

Now this phenomenon of thought-reading has been 
observed by me, to a certain extent, in some of my 
mesmeric patients. 

The first occasion of my remarking it was in con- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 447 

sequence of an accidental occurrence — for, in truth, 
I have never sought for marvels in mesmerism ; if 
marvels I have to relate, they have presented them- 
Belves naturally to my notice. E. A., when in his 
normal state used sometimes to exhibit a trick on the 
cards, which consists in a long and rather tedious 
process of arranging a certain number of cards ac- 
COrding to the letters of certain words, and then, by 
the correspondence <>f the letters, discovering any 
two card- which may have been chosen by another 

person. 1 was curious to observe whether my sleep- 
waker retained enough of his calculating and com- 
bining powers in the mesmeric state to go through 
tin- tnck as usual, and I therefore asked a lady, who 

happened to be present <>i;<- day when K. A. was 

mesmerised^ to choose two card- from amongst the 
little packets of pairs, which the sleepwafeer had 

already placed in proper order on the table. The 

lady chose the cards by her eye only, in perfect 
silence and standing behind the sleepwaker, so that 
there was absolutely nothing of word or gesture to 
guide him in his subsequent discovery. He began to 
gather up the cards as usual preparatory to com- 
pleting the trick, when suddenly he threw them down 
with an air of disgust, saying words to this effect : — 
"Why should I go through this farce? I know 

already the two cards which the lady thought of. 
They were BO and so." He w;ts perfectly right. 
Another time, a little basket, brought in by my wife 
during his sleepwaking, was standing on a table near 
him. He took it up and considered it (always with 
his eyes shut), and said to my wife, " Ah, you are 



448 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. "* 

thir king now of making this a present to Mr. V. O.'s 
little girl." This was quite true. Again : I asked 
the same sleepwaker in his state of mesmerism, if he 
knew of any application which would strengthen his 
eyes — then weak. " Yes/' he said, " something of 
which you have been thinking — a wash, for the pre- 
scription of which you wrote to a physician in Paris 
not long ago for the use of a friend of yours." He 
spoke correctly ; and I declare most positively that 
the sleepwaker had no means whatever of knowing 
the facts he stated, except through the medium of my 
own thoughts. 

Anna M occasionally manifested phenomena 

similar to the above, and (woman-like, perhaps) ac- 
companied them by a far more delicate and accurate 
perception of the state of my feelings, at such times 
as she was placed in mesmeric relation to myself. 
Frequently she has surprised me by the manner in 
which she anticipated, on these occasions, my wishes 
with regard to any little experiment I desired to 
make. " Come," she would say, " you are now wish- 
ing that I should do a piece of needle-work. I own 
just now it is rather a trouble to me, but I will do it 
notwithstanding." 

In my notes relative to the same period I find the 
following fact mentioned. A musician, with whose 

name or person Anna M was not in the least 

acquainted, was in the room during her sleepwaking 
— February 16th, 1838. Not a word had been 
spoken about music ; all present were engaged in 
observing the sleepwaker, when suddenly she said to 
me, " You know there is a gentleman here who sings 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 449 

and plays very well. You were wishing a while ago 
to ask him to sit down to the piano. You must ask 
him now. and, when he is playing, lay one of your 
hands on his shoulder, and the other on mine, and I 
shall hear the mask too." 

These phenomena, as F have said, were manifested, 
not forced, and I had occasion to observe that, like 
all other phenomena pertaining to mind, they were 
best exhibited when most spontaneously exhibited. 

Attempts to elicit them in any other manner generally 

failed. Once, standing near Anna M I ad- 

dressed to her a sentence mentally, but she did not 
comprehend it. though, that I wished to say some- 
thin- to her and that there was an action of my 
mind, she manifested knowledge. Her words on this 
anion were remarkable. " Why do you speak so 

low. sir) Speak louder, that I may hear you'/' 

Now, beil remembered, I had not spoken at all, nor 
given her to understand, in any way. that 1 was about 
to address any thing to her. 

One experiment, however, of this nature, was al- 
most invariably successful. If I mentally ran over 
a tune in my head, Anna would immediately begin 
to beat time, and sway her head about in the mea- 
sure of the air. Anxious to have a correct witness 
of the experiment, f agreed with a musician that at a 
certain silent signal I should begin mentally to re- 
peat an air. and. at another signal, change the air 
and measure from slow to fast. I made the musician 
acquainted with both the airs beforehand, in order 
that he might accurately judge whether the sleep- 
waker kept to the time. The experiment answered 
38* 



450 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. " 

perfectly, both as to beating time in the first place 
with accuracy, and then as accurately changing the 
measure. 

I could relate a crowd of other circumstances of a 
similar nature, and some perhaps even more remark- 
able than the above ; but I forbear : the above are 
sufficient to illustrate the principle which I am en- 
deavoring to educe from facts. Should the prin- 
ciple itself remain unacknowledged, I shall have 
already drawn too largely on the faith of my reader. 
Admit that thought communicates action to sur- 
rounding media ; admit that the mesmerised are sen- 
sible to that action ; and all that may seem wondrous 
in my statements vanishes. It may be doubted, 
indeed, whether the prejudice that exists with respect 
to such phenomena may not have been wholly 
caused by their having too often been brought for- 
ward, not only unaccompanied by a proper explana- 
tion and in disconnection with a sufficient cause, but 
actually expressed in such a way as to deepen mys- 
tery and to shock the scientific. The power which 
sleepwakers, in certain states of sensibility, undoubt- 
edly possess, of perceiving the thoughts of others, has 
been called divination ; a term which approximates 
the faculty in question to witchcraft and all its vul- 
gar associations. The sleepwaker does not divine 
what passes in the minds of others ; he i-eads it there 
by means which are in perfect accordance with the 
economy of our being. Let me endeavor to set this 
in the strongest, clearest light. Should I even re- 
peat myself, it will scarcely be a fault on a subject 
like this, where indeed a certain iteration seems ne- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 451 

cessary to familiarize our minds with themes so new 
and of such grave importance. 

As we are more acquainted with that corporeal 
change in ourselves which accompanies sensation, 
than with that other more hidden which accompanies 
reflection, let us reason by analogy from the one we 
best know to the one we know the least. Both are 
mcntiil operations, hut the one. as we are sure from 
facts, is connected with a series of material move- 
ments which stand as actual sinus and representor 
lives of itself. There is sensation, and there is also 
the language of sensation ; in other words, nervous 
motions, which are equivalent to a language, Now, 
w< re we enabled with equal certainty to say. when 
speaking of our intellectual operations, — "There is 
thought, and there i> the material sign of thought:" 
could we affirm positively that, as every sensation has 
its peculiar nervous motion, so also every reflection 

has its peculiar action ef the brain, we should be 
greatly helped to a comprehension of the point in 
question. For it is plain that, could another person 
be made aware, in any way, of the motions of my 
brain during thought, and were he also properly 
instructed in the signifieasey of those motions, he 
Blight read from "the book and volume of my 
brain M as readily as from any other collection of 
symbols. For it is not the nature of the sign, when 
once its meaning is fixed, that can make any dif- 
ference or create any difficulty. The deaf and dumb 
converse as well by motions of their fingers as per- 
sons in general by giving impulse to the air. Now 
the presumption certainly is that every thought really 



452 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

has its particular configuration in that texture of our 
brain ; for, 1st. We know that thought does indeed 
move the brain generally, whence we might infer 
particular motions for particular thoughts. 2dly. We 
are sure that, in some instances, individual thoughts 
do move the brain and thence certain nerves in an 
individual manner ; as, for instance, in cases where 
a thought reproduces a corporeal phenomenon, gen- 
erally dependent on sensation, such as a distinct 
visual image, or a certain feeling in the nerves of the 
teeth. 

From these phenomena it seems that we only 
draw a legitimate conclusion, when we say that every 
thought moves the brain in its own appropriate 
manner. Our personal ignorance of these specific 
changes, though they occur in our own persons, is no 
proof whatever that they do not take place. We are 
perfectly unaware that sensation depends on a cor- 
poreal sign ; yet a corporeal sign there is. 

If it should be asked in what manner the sleep- 
waker has come to be so well acquainted with the 
signs and characters of thought, I might think it 
perhaps a sufficient answer to reply, " The soul is 
wise — yes, wiser than we know." There are more 
intuitions, or (as Kant calls them) " cognitions a 
priori" than we suppose. What if motions of the 
ethereal medium were the native and universal lan- 
guage of the mind ? Or, to answer one question by 
another, how, in sensation, have certain motions 
come to be representative of certain external objects ? 
I may be told, by experience; but again, experience 
itself must have a basis. What first taught the mind 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 453 

the connection between the sign and the object? 
Plainly an intuition ; for it is self-evident that we 
cannot advance to new knowledge but by the aid of 
previous knowledge. But where is this previous 
knowledge to begin ? It must begin somewhere, or 
we shall never know anything. When we grant 
that we do know something, we also imply that this 
our knowledge had a beginning, and this beginning 
could only be a truth so clear as to be apprehended 
at once without the aid of anterior knowledge; for, 
to suppose a knowledge anterior to the beginning of 
knowledge i< manifestly absurd. Thus it appears 
that we cannot but concede the existence of a first 

knowledge, which came to us in a totally different 

manner from any other, about which we could nei- 
ther have pondered nor reasoned; a knowledge 

which, luminous itself, required no light for its illus- 
tration : a knowledge which is the guiding torch to 
all other knowledge. whatever; in line, an intuition 
or cognition d priori* 

This reasoning, applicable to all knowledge what- 
ever, i- more especially so to that peculiar knowledge 
which we call sensation, and which Locke has satis- 
faetorily proved to be the avenue at least to the greater 
part of all We know, of all we are; the occasion of 
development to the mind, the awakening touch that 

s in motion the germ of all our faculties. Locke, 
indeed, by his unfortunate and misconceived com- 
parison of the mind to a sheet of white paper, has 
obscured his own beautiful system ; but to him who 
studies the work on the " Human Understanding" 
as a whole, it will be seen that the reflection of Locke 



454 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

is nearly identical with the pure reason of Kant, 
Locke allowing clearly that sensation is only (to use 
his own words) " one of those ways whereby the 
mind comes by its ideas." 

Now, let it be remembered that the mind in the 
complete mesmeric state has been proved to be more 
rational, more reflective, than in its normal condition ; 
consequently nearer to that which Wordsworth so 
finely calls — 

" The fountain-light of all our day, 



The master-light of all our seeing.' 

Is it then wonderful that its first-developed intui- 
tions should be recalled with superior ease and clear- 
ness to its perceptions ? 

This is the view of the subject which searches it 
most deeply and entirely ; but, while I maintain that 
the mind's knowledge of the mesmeric signs must in 
the first instance be intuitive, I am also enabled to 
modify the statement so as to render it more analo- 
gous to our ordinary views and common experience. 
Like our other intuitions, this particular one is devel- 
oped manifestly through time and circumstance. 
The phenomena of silent perception are, let it be re- 
membered, not only rare in occurrence, but slow to 
occur. As far as I have observed, they only take 
place when a person has been brought by degrees 
into a very exalted condition of sensibility, only when 
he has learnt, and, as it were, perfected himself in 
his new mode of being, and in the language apper- 
taining to that mode of being. 

In the chain of our argument then, there appears 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 455 

to be no link wanting. It is thus connected. Every 
thought moves the brain in its own appropriate man- 
ner. 

A pervading medium being allowed to exist through- 
out nature (such as the electric), it follows as a con- 
sequence that every thought which moves the brain 
imparts motion also to the ethereal medium. 

Mesmerised persons, being in a state of extreme 
sensibility, are cognizant of the motions of finer me- 
dia than common. 

The motions, created by the thoughts of other per- 
sons, being transferred through the brain, and through 
a certain medium, to the sensorium of a mesmerised 
person, are to bim intelligible signs of thought — a 
language which, though new to him at first, he, by a 
gradual process of association, gives meaning to and 
learns to comprehend* 

We may further remark (in order to elucidate cer- 
tain other phenomena of mesmerism) that a mesmeric 
patient is in such relation with his mesmeriser as to 
be peculiarly attentive to the workings of his mind ; 
with these he is evidently far more connected than 
with the intellectual operations of any indifferent in- 
dividual. Hence the thoughts and feelings of the 
mesmeriser are transferred to the patient more vividly, 
and with a superior degree of accuracy, so as (if I 
may so express myself) to bring into sympathetic 
vibration the very brain and nervous fibres of mes- 
meriser and patient. Facts coincide with this sup- 
position. In various parts of this work it will be seen 
that the mesmeric patient takes, pro tempore, the tone 
of his mind from that of the mesmeriser's mind. It 



456 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

may farther be asserted that he shares the knowledge 
of the latter — a circumstance which accounts for 
many apparent miracles regarding the information of 
sleepwakers on subjects with which they were not 
previously acquainted. When I first began to mes- 
merise, I used to consult my sleepwakers on dark and 
dubious points, with something of the blind faith of 
a novice in a new and wondrous science. Their an- 
swers to such inquiries w r ere calculated to bewilder 
me by the pure influence of astonishment ; for the 
simple had become theorists — the uneducated were 
turned into philosophers. At length I was awakened 
from my dream of somnambulic knowledge by find- 
ing that my patient's ideas shifted so visibly with my 
own, and were so plainly the echo of my own thoughts 
that not to have perceived the source whence they 
originated would have been pertinacious blindness 
indeed. I was but taking back my own. and receiv- 
ing coin issued from my own treasury. I particularly 
observed that what I had last read, or most recently 
reflected on, was most vividly returned to me by my 
sleepwaker. It was a vexatious discovery. Would 
that I could present to my reader, as oracles, the spec- 
ulations of my patients on the ethereal medium ! 
Would that I could enlighten the world by display- 
ing, as authenticated by a preternatural illumination, 
the harmony and mutual relationship of all things ! 
But, alas ! I should only be repeating my own feeble 
explorations of the regions of truth ; I should but 
be retailing my own mortal and uninspired surmises ! 
A few particular instances of the coincidence be- 
tween my own thoughts and those of my sleepwakers 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 457 

may interest the reader, and prove that which, as yet, 
I have only generally advanced. 

E. A. was perfectly ignorant of the mechanism of 
the eye, or of the fact that images on the retina are 
reversed representations of external objects. 1 had 
been reading some works on this knotty subject, in 
which needless pains had ben taken to turn the image 
th<- right wav upward, when 1 questioned my patient 
as to our mode of seeing. To my surprise, he en- 
tered immediately upon the topic of the reversed lin- 
en the retina, and — though confusedly, indeed 

— repeated partly somfe mystical stuff which I had 
been reading in the •• Seherin von Prevorsf," (he did 
not understand German,) upon thai head — and 
partly a scientific stati ment of the mere fact, which 
latter he illustrated by drawing on paper the very 
same mathematical figure which I had been contem- 
plating that morning, and which represented the in- 
tersfection of the rays at the focal point, which causes 
the phenomenon in question. 

The following coincidence was still more remark- 
able and perfect than the preceding. 

In a work by M . Despines of Ai.\. in Provence, I 
had been reading some speculations on the (supposed) 
vital fluid. It was there conjectured that souk; of 

(»nr maladies take their rise Irum the unequal distri- 
bution of this fluid along the channels of the nerves. 
I declare most positively that the sleepwnker had 
never seen the work in question, which had just been 

forwarded to me by Lord X , from Geneva. 

Nevertheless*, when in the mesmeric state, lie apropos 

3J 



458 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

of something said respecting a person's illness, thus 
expressed himself: — 

" II y a des maladies qu'on ne peut pas voir. Ce 
sont les derangemens de la fluide nerveuse, qui est 
accumulee ou par ci, ou par la ; et c'est cela qui fait 
les maladies." 

I copy the words exactly from notes taken at the 
time they were uttered. 

It must not, however, be supposed that this reflec- 
tion of thought from the mesmeriser to the patient 
destroys the individual character of the latter. The 
knowledge returns to its originator, tinged always by 
the medium from which it has reverted. Thus Anna 
M did not philosophize like E. A. Her specu- 
lations were influenced by the synthetical habits of 
woman's mind. In her there was more of the heart, 
in the other more of the head. In every case I found 
that sleepwakers do not retail things like mere par- 
rots, but as thinking beings, themselves elevated to a 
higher intellectual region than the ordinary. Besides, 
there is always in the mesmeric state a certain inde- 
pendent power of thought, proper to the patient, the 
degree of which varies with the natural independ- 
ence of the character. Those ideas I was never con- 
scious of in my own mind might be fairly attributed 
to my sleepwakers as their own property. From 
some of these I have taken hints, at least : especially 
in all that regards the mesmeric state, of which mes- 
meric individuals maybe supposed to have the same 
personal knowledge that we have of our normal 
existence. Let us now pause to generalize the more 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 459 

important of our facts in the spirit of the following 
remark : — 

u The great object of philosophy is to ascertain the 
simple or ultimate principles, into which all the phe- 
nomena of nature may. by analysis, be resolved." 

Striving after the philosophic unity recommended 
by Dr. Chalmers, yet, keeping within the verge of 
safe analogy, we may affirm that we have been consi- 
dering — relative to mesmeric action — a medium 
which, by its character and offices, is capable of being 
identified with that other medium treated of under 

the head of u mesmeric sensation.' 5 

For that which is predicated of the one may be 
said equally of the other : — 

Both have been shown capable of communicating 
impulsions to the human system from a distance. 

Both act through obstacles which are impediments 

t<> grosser media. 

Both bear an especial relation to the human mind. 

In the one case, indeed, it appears that the medium 
act- upon mind, while, in the other, it is manifest 
that mind acts Upon the medium J but this distinction 

will. I imagine, vanish, when it is remembered that 

we have already proved sensations to be in reality 

actions, and not mere passive performances of the 
sentient principle, and that it is more probable that 
the mind always consuls actively its book of si^ns 

(as the nerVOUS system may be called), than that it is 
swayed, in any case, inertly by the impulses of the 
external world. 

More briefly, sensation and reflection are, in truth, 



460 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

both actions, though different actions, of one thinking 
substance. 

This being allowed, a pervading medium being 
allowed, and it being manifest, as a consequence, that 
this mere ethereal medium must respond to every ac- 
tion of the mind and brain, it will be evident that the 
mind impresses motion on the medium by the very 
act in which it seizes the meaning of the motions to 
which it had been passive. Taking the proposition in 
a material point of view, it may be said that, in the un- 
dulations of the nervous system, and the elastic media, 
of which it is the centre, there must be reaction not 
less than action. In either case, the motions of the 
medium have been shown to be symbolical of some- 
thing beyond themselves, and to compose a language 
which the mind recognizes and interprets. 

Other points of resemblance between the sentient 
and the mesmeric medium may be found. 

It appeared probable that the former, from its 
action from a distance, and the rapidity of its com- 
munications, was, like the luminous ether, of an 
elastic and vibratory nature. Now considerations of 
a similar kind induce us to come to a similar conclu- 
sion with respect to the mesmeric medium. We have 
seen that physical effects have been produced by one 
person on another from distances and through obsta- 
cles which render the supposition of a material sub- 
stance emanated from the body absurd. Anna M 

was by me brought into the mesmeric state when I 
was divided from her by a screen, and by the whole 
length of a large apartment ; and again when I was 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 461 

in a house a quarter of a mile distant from that in 
which she was sensible to my action. Facts like these 
intimate not doubtfully that the mesmeric medium 
has not a real transitive motion, but only a motion 
of oscillation; that the mesmeriser does not project a 
means of communication to his patient, as one would 
too ;i string to a person at a distance, but merely 
agitates an already existing means of communication, 
as oik would impart vibration to a string already 
stretched from one's own hand to that of another 
person. 

The phenomena of sympathetic sensation between 
mesmerise? and patient come in aid of the above con- 
clusion. It bas been shown that, in certain cases, 

where a mesmeric relation i- perfectly established be- 
hreeo two persons, the impressions of tact and savor 
an transferred accurately from the nervous system of 

oik' to that of the other. Thus Anna M , when 

an\ one gtfve pain to my shoulder, foot, t\c imme- 
diately began to rub the corresponding part of her 
own person J and she could also, from a real impres- 
>i<»ii ou her nerves of taste, correctly State what 

I was eating or drinking. Miss T likewise, 

through nerVOUfl motions in her own hand, became 

aware of the size and form of objects which I was 
secretly handling. 

These phenomena extremely resemble those of 
sympathetic vibration produced by the tremors of the 
air. --It is thus," (says Mrs. Somerville, speaking 
of the latter) "that sympathetic undulations are ex- 
cited by a body vibrating near insulated tended 
strings, capable of following its undulations, either by 
39* 



462 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

vibrating entire, or by separating themselves into their 
harmonic divisions. If two cords equally stretched, 
of which one is twice or three times longer than the 
other, be placed side by side, and if the shorter be 
sounded, its vibrations will be communicated by the 
air to the other, which will be thrown into such a 
state of vibration, that it will be spontaneously divided 
into segments equal in length to the shorter string." 
Again, when sand is strewed on paper or parchment 
stretched over a large bell-shaped tumbler, with pro- 
per precautions, " if a circular disc of glass be held 
concentrically over this apparatus, with its plane par- 
allel to the surface of the paper, and set in vibration 
by drawing a bow across its edge so as to make sand 
on its surface take any of Chladni's figures, the sand 
on the paper will assume the very same form, in con- 
sequence of the vibrations of the disc being commu- 
nicated to the paper by the air." 

" When a slow air is played on a flute near this 
apparatus, each note calls up a particular form in the 
sand, which the next note effaces to establish its 
own." It is plain that this visible manifestation of 
an invisible agent might be made a language, and 
might suggest to a person versed in its symbols the 
air played on the flute so perfectly as to enable him 
to write it down, even though he neither saw nor 
heard the musical instrument from which it emanated, 
each form in the sand indicating to him a particular 
note. The analogy between this musical language 
and mesmeric sensation is manifest. Just as the 
vibrations of strings, or of vibrating plates are repro- 
duced in other strings, or visibly represented in the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 463 

sand by the agency of the intervening air, so are the 
nervous motions of the mesmeriser's system repro- 
duced and faithfully represented in that of his patient 
by the agency of the mesmeric medium. It is true 
that the aerial vibrations are only manifested in tense 
substances, and thai the nerves are not, as generally 
supposed, in a state of tension, and herein our paral- 
lel is not complete; but then, in the latter case, if 
the undulating body ifl not the same, neither is the 
medium that excites the undulations the same. The 
true and important point of resemblance is this ; — 
the nerves have a capacity to vibrate in unison with 
a certain medium, just as tended strings have a ca- 
pacity to vibrate in correspondence with the air, and 

Sympathetic vibration! may undoubtedly be just as 

well propagated from one system of nerves to another 
by their own proper medium, a- from one string to 

another. <>r from the glass disc to paper, by the air. 

Tin- being allowed, is it any marvel that the trans- 
ferred vibrations of the nerves should be an intelligi- 
ble language! Even a- regards the mere tremors of 

the air. we find that " by the vibrations of sand on a 

drum-head, the besieged have discovered the direc- 
tion in which a countermine was working/' If per- 
sonal interest can thus awaken the intellect to a com- 
prehension of mere external motions, how much more 
keenly must personal feeling rouse the sentient be- 
ing, who i- himself the subject of sympathetic ner- 
VOUS action, into a perception of every change in the 
System with which he is in unison? Besides, motions 
of the nerves are more than a language ; they are the 
language of sensation ; each of their changes is not 



464 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

merely a sign of something occurring externally to a 
man's self, but in his very frame and being : thus, 
when a mesmerised patient has a nervous vibration 
transmitted to him from another, he has also an ac- 
tual corporeal feeling, not only coincident with that 
vibration, but also perfectly corresponding with the 
original feeling in the other person. It is, however, 
of importance to remark that to all these phenomena 
the will of the mesmeriser bears more than a rela- 
tion ; — it has an evident share in their very existence. 
The degree of attention that he bestows on producing 
the phenomena of sympathetic sensation has a great 
influence on the time and manner of their occur- 
rence ; neither in this instance, nor in any other re- 
lating to mesmerism, can we leave the will out of our 
calculations ; it is, indeed, the focus, where all the 
rays of our information meet, — the centre without 
which there would be no general relationship — no 
union between our forces : this premised, we proceed 
to our conclusion, that the relation between mesme- 
riser and patient is established by an elastic medium 
is to be presumed from the nearly simultaneous and 
correspondent action of the nervous systems of both. 
Here, as in former cases, admit a vibratory medium, 
and that the mesmerised are sensible to that medium, 
and every thing is clear and satisfactory ; without it 
all is dark. 

They who watch for my halting, and are on the 
look out for discrepancies, may here remind me that 
I have in other places advanced facts which are at 
variance with the supposition of a vibratory medium 
in mesmerism, and which rather tend to establish the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 465 

existence of a material emanation, of which the mes- 
meriser's body is the original source. Contact, the 
breath, motions of the hand near the patient, have 
been described as powerfully aiding the transmission 
of the mesmeric influence. To this I reply, that it is 
now very generally admitted that heat is but a modi- 
fication of the same agent which produces the sensa- 
tion of light, — in other words, no real entity, but a 
peculiar action of matter. Thus to heat a body is 
only to bring the atoms which compose that body 
into a particular state of vibration. Yet in order to 
effect tin-, in order to induce that peculiar action of 
matter which we call heat, we employ certain means, 
which, being themselves material, tend to invest the 
nt with a material character, but which are in 
reality only the occasions of bringing certain atoms 
into a particular state. 

It may well. then, be allowed by those at least 
who adopt the nndnlatory theory, that the material 
means employed in mesmerism, to charge a patient 
with the mesmeric influence, are no proof whatever 
of the material character of thai influence, but are 
simply methods whereby a medium may be thrown 
into a particular state of action. That there is no 
just reason why that action should not be vibratory 
is also manifest. 

Pursuing the analogy between heat and the mes- 
meric agency, we know that, with regard to ex- 
citing the former, the means are not only various, 
but that they may be altered according to circum- 
stances. Occasionally they may appear very com- 
plex, as where chemistry employs its resources to 



466 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

develop heat by the union of two liquids or gases ; 
and occasionally nothing can be more simple, as 
where, by mere friction, we produce heat. This 
should warn us not to be surprised that mesmeric 
results should accrue from different processes, simple 
as well as complex ; that at one time the mesmeriser 
should employ all the intermediate aids of gesture, 
look, and respiration ; yet at another, with equal 
success, influence his patient by the mere action of 
his mind and brain. 

I can assure my reader that I am as anxious to 
give the subject a fair consideration as he himself 
can possibly be ; and I can suggest to myself objec- 
tions to a vibratory cause in mesmerism, which, per- 
haps, might not have occurred to his own mind. 
Thus I found on one occasion, when I mesmerised a 
person out of doors, that the wind had a manifest 
power to disturb, and, as it were, bear away the mes- 
meric influence. This, on a cursory view, goes very 
near to investing it with a transitive character ; but, 
on a more accurate examination, does not in any way 
affect our previous conclusions to the contrary. We 
have only to remember that even the transmission of 
light depends on the condition of the atmosphere, 
and that wind disturbs that vibratory property of the 
air, which produces sound, in a marked and acknow- 
ledged manner. All then that is really proved, when 
the wind is found to disturb the mesmeric influence, 
is that wind has the power to affect the vibratory 
properties of the medium. 

Again : substances touched or breathed upon by 
the mesmeriser will, when tested by such patients as 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 467 

are extremely sensitive, be found to retain something 
of a mesmeric virtue for a considerable period, as if 
a material emanation clung around them, and at 
length became dissipated in the surrounding atmo- 
sphere. Nay, I must avow a circumstance, that, 
more than any other, seems to shake my hypothesis 

of undulations. I have mesmerised Anna M , 

by sending to her from a distance a note, which I 
had previously carried about me for some time. But 
what do these phenomena in reality prove ? Merely 
that the mesmeric medium, like other media, has the 
power of imparting a change to the particles of the 
substance on which it acts. 

The following reflections will at once support my 
hypothesis, and set my meaning, as I trust at least, 

in a dearer light. 

Whatever is corporeal is ponderable. When, 
therefore, we pronounce that an agent is imponder- 
able, we at once pronounce that it has no existence 
(that i< to say, virtually, and as far as our senses are 
concerned), but in motion — that it is only an effect 
or action of mutter, and not an individual substance. 
Such agents, then, as affect bodies without adding to 
their weight, can only he conceived to act by intro- 
ducing a change into the relative position of their 

particles. Tims, when a grain of musk perfumes a 

sheet of paper, without either losing in its own 
weight, or imparting additional substance to the 

paper, what can it prove more than that the action 
of one thing can be imparted to another ? Or, when 
what we call infection is conveyed from one person 
to another by wearing apparel, or by a letter ; and 



468 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

again, when fumigating the apparel or the letter 
properly is found to restore those substances to their 
former innoxious condition, is it not because, in the 
one case, the substances had acquired the property of 
imparting a change to the atoms of the body with 
which they should come in contact ; and, in the 
other, had this new mode of action abstracted from 
them ? This at least we know, that color, which ap- 
pears to be a material body, and is transferable from 
one body to another, is actually nothing more than a 
chemical change in the position and arrangement of 
those atoms which by their varied manner of cohe- 
sion produce what we call the different textures of 
substances. Again : science has ascertained that the 
mere action of the luminous medium can produce an 
internal change in the texture of crystals, and can 
develope magnetic properties in iron ; while our own 
observation may assure us, by daily examples in the 
fading of vegetable colors, that lighl alofte can so 
alter the atoms of bodies. a> to change their capaci- 
ties of absorption and reflection. The recent dis- 
covery, whereby a landscape is transferred, in all its 
natural hues, to paper prepared with nitrate of silver, 
by the simple agency of light, speaks more strongly 
still to the same effect. Nor is it by any means fatal 
to our cause, that the change which mesmerism in- 
duces in bodies should be but temporary. Electricity 
induces temporary alteration in bodies ; the magnetic 
virtue in iron may be diminished or reinforced by 
light, by heat, and other external agencies : while to 
or from such metals as only become magnetic by in- 
duction, the properties of magnetism can be given or 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 469 

taken away at pleasure. Heat, also, can impart a 
temporary change to the molecules of matter, giving 
them a new vibration and impulse, which gradually 
ceases and leaves the body they compose in its for- 
mer condition. The analogy in this case to mesmeric 
action is particularly striking, and would alone be 
sufficient, one might imagine, to rank this agency 
amongst the imponderable media; It renders per* 
fectly comprehensible not only the transference of 
mesmerism from the mesmerise! to an inanimate sub- 
Btance, but the subsequent and further transmission of 
the action from the inanimate substance to a mes- 
meric patient 

It may Further be conceived that this particular 
action of matter, when weakened by transference to a 
mesmeric billet, for instance, can only affect such 
frames as are predisposed to receive the influence, 
just as the contagion of illness conveyed by letter 
will act most readily on persons predisposed to take 
infection. In every case, where an agency so subtile 
a- i hat of mesmerism IS to be appreciated in its minute 

gradations, there must exist a previous acquaintance 
with it- effects, and an acute degree of sensibility 
both natural and acquired. Beings possessing such 

Qualifications are indeed rare. and. as detectors of 

nature's finer influences, most interesting to the ob- 

server. They alone it i- evident, can throw new 
light on the action and properties of the mesmeric 
medium. If we only regarded them as instruments 
of extreme delicacy, we should value them as the 
chemist, his test and reagents, or as the student in 
electricity, his balance of torsion. Dr. Elhotson, by 
40 



470 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ** 

means of two young females, who from their extreme 
sensibility may be called mesmerometers of the high- 
est precision, has ascertained particulars which bid 
fair to develop the laws of this remarkable agency. 
Amongst other things he has discovered that mes- 
merisable substances may be mesmerised by the eye 
alone, without contact of any kind. This is of im- 
portance ; for, to what can we refer such an effect, 
but to a change in the atomic relations of the affected 
substances, which change cannot but be brought 
about by impulsion on some medium subsisting be- 
tween the eye and the objects ? Thus, if some phe- 
nomena seem to give a material character to mes- 
meric agency, others again more truly invest it with 
all the finer attributes of that subtile, ethereal, and 
elastic medium, which pervades creation. 

Whatever objections, then, may be urged against 
the modulatory character of the mesmeric medium 
are shown to be null ; while, on the other hand, we 
should be forced into absurdities, did we attribute to 
it any other mode of action. 

Thus proved to be undulatory, elastic, pervading, 
in peculiar relation withthemindofman.it should 
seem clearly to be identified with the medium spoken 
of in sensation. 

But of this we have a yet closer method of proof. 

First. The phenomena of sensation proper to the 
mesmeric patient proved to us originally the exist- 
ence of a certain medium, which circumstances led 
us to suspect might form the groundwork in all 
sensation whatever, since it acts pervadinglv, and by 
simple impulsion on the nerves, which are the real 
agents in sensation. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 471 

Secondly. The phenomena of sympathetic sensa- 
tion, originating with the mesmeriser, and from him 
transferred to his patient, bring the sentient medium 
into relation with the mesmeriser, and presumably 
identify it with the mesmeric medium ; especially 
as it is found that the mesmeriser's will and attention 
aid the production of the phenomena. Besides it is 
fair to infer that all the relations between mesmeriser 
and patient, being connected in one series, and bear- 
in- one character, are brought about by one medium, 
which we call mesmeric. 

Thirdly, 'That such a medium is really the great 
medium in all sensation we may again deduce from 

tin-. It is found capable of transferring sensations 

from the mesmeriser to the patient : we may there- 
fore conclude that it i< capable in general of pro- 

ducing sensation, — a task to which it seems pecu- 
liarly adapted from its acting (as has been shown) 
with such exquisite precision on the nerves. 

The chain of evidence seems thus complete. 

In the firs! place we have a particular medium of 
Sensation indicated to us by the phenomena of mes- 
meric perception ; in the second place that medium 
i- connected with the mesmeriser. by his capacity of 
using it BO as to produce sensation in his patient. 
Finally, it is again reciprocally connected with sen- 
sation in general by its capacity of acting on the 
nerves of a human being, so as to produce sensation 
of various kinds. 

Having thus assimilated the mesmeric medium to 
such a medium or to such media (if there be many) 
as form the groundwork in the external preparatives 



472 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

of sensation, I would endeavor still further to asso- 
ciate it with other media, now generally considered 
to be of an undulatory nature and universally al- 
lowed to be proper objects of physical and certain 
experiment. 

If we can succeed in this, we shall at once give to 
our agency a claim on science ; connecting it with 
calculation and with mechanical analysis. 

It is plain that this can only be effected by detect- 
ing and bringing to view similarities between its 
action and the action of such other forces as are sub- 
jects of the physico-mathematical sciences, — forces 
which are now considered to be mere modifications 
of the electric. 

Already we have seen that, like heat, it can be 
imparted by one body to another, and that, like heat, 
it gradually leaves the body to which it is commu- 
nicated. 

Some interesting experiments by Dr. Elliotson 
prove that, like light, it may be reflected from mir- 
rors. A celebrated sculptor at Rome assured me 
that he had seen the experiment tried and verified on 
his own brother by a nobleman, whose name it might 
be thought an impertinence in me to mention. 

These are striking analogies between the mesmeric 
and other media ; — but to electricity — now con- 
sidered as the great parent of them all — it bears a 
yet greater resemblance. 

First. We know that electricity is capable of all 
that modification in its action which the necessities 
of our case demand. Sometimes its effects are sud- 
den and energetic ; sometimes of indefinite and un- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 473 

interrupted continuance. It is " capable of moving 
with various degrees of facility through the pores or 
even the substance of matter ; " ! and is not impeded 
in its action •• by the intervention of any substance 
whatever, provided it be not itself in an electric 
stat' 

This capacity of varied action and of pervading 
influence has already been shown to characterize the 
mesmeric medium. 

Secondly. Electricity may be called into activity 
by heat Here the resemblance between the electric 
and the mesmeric medium is still more marked. 

I ha\e found that I could not successfully mesmer- 
ist in a cold room, or when I was in a low state of 

bodily temperature; while on the other hand, a 
warm atmosphere, and warmth in my own hand, 
have always intensified and expedited the transmis- 
sion of mesmeric influence from myself to another. 
The firsl time I ever saw a mesmeric experiment, 
the mesmeriser made it an express condition that he 
should have a warm room for his process. The 

txperiment, as will be remembered, was quickly 
and successfully performed. Now, of electricity we 

know that it may be called into activity by heat, and 
that the heat of the air is intimately connected with 

Itfl electrical condition. 

Thirdly. - Electricity readily escapes from a point; 
and a pointed object receives it with most facility." 

I have found, by experience, that the mesmeric 

1 These and the following characteristics of electricity are taken 
from Mrs Soinerville's admirable work on the Connexion of the 
Physical Sciences. 

40* 



474 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

medium is most powerfully conducted by the tips of 
the fingers, and that mesmeric actions, directed also 
towards the tips of the patient's fingers, have a more 
remarkable effect than when simply directed over the 
surfaces of the body. 

Fourthly. " Iceland spar is made electric by the 
smallest pressure between the finger and thumb, and 
retains it for a long time." 

How analogous is this to the transference of mes- 
merism to certain metals by human contact, and to 
the manner in which they slowly port with the com- 
municated property ! 

Fifthly. Electricity may be transferred from one 
body to another in the same manner as heat is com- 
municated, and like it, too, the body loses by the 
transmission. 

This resembles the exhaustion and repair of mes- 
meric force, of which I have, in another place, taken 
notice. 

It is true that, in the case of mesmerism, a human 
body is the electric machine, another Iranian body 
the recipient of the force, and that neither are repre- 
sented to be in a state of electrical insulation ; — but 
be it remembered we are contending — not for the 
identity of the agency with the electric, but for the 
propinquity. While we affirm that there are analo- 
gies too great to admit of a separate source, we not 
the less contend that there are differences too strik- 
ing not to demonstrate a varied action. Their 
powers not being identical, it is evident that the laws 
of their retention and escape may vary, as do those 
that regulate the transmission or accumulation of the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 475 

galvanic or magnetic forces. Thus, a body may be 
in a state of mesmeric though not of electrical insu- 
lation. Magnetic or electric agency seems to aid 
the mfesmeriser in influencing bis patient. I found, 
when mesmerising Professor Agassiz, that a magnet 
held in my hand assisted me to raise his limbs by 
that Species of attraction which may be called mes- 
meric. It is singular, likewise, but true, that, when- 
ever I took the magnet into my hand, however 
secretly, he, having his eyes always shut, invariably 
complained of a palpitation at the heart. 

It has also been told me, by Dr. Elliotson, that a 
lady, who is remarkably gifted with mesmeric force, 

gains ;m additional share of that power when she 

mesmerises standing on a glass stool and in a state of 
positive electricity* This fact aproximates the two 
ricies in a verj obvious and striking manner. 

A few additional remarks on the connection of the 
human bod\ with electricity may be pardoned. 

Much needless pain- have been expended to prove 
that the force in question is an agent in our economy. 
It cannot but be so. \\< presence in our own frames 
is only one of the consequences of its universal pre- 
sence — now accorded by all philosophers. 

Recent disc >veries tend to prove that gravitation 
itself i- but a residual and comparatively feeble por- 
tion of the electric energy ; and the power which 

electricity displays in effecting chemical combination, 
or separation, demonstrates that it really binds or 
looses the atoms of which material bodies are com- 
posed. To separate one drop of water from another, 
it has been calculated that as much electric force 



476 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. "* 

must be employed as would be called into activity 
during an ordinary thunder-storm. How, then, can 
the electric principle be absent from the frame of 
man, which is itself but a collection of material par- 
tic s ? Facts, moreover, prove that our bodies are 
electric, and that the degree of electricity varies in 
different individuals. The silk stocking drawn off 
hastily at night rustles with electricity ; the hair when 
rapidly combed, especially in frosty weather, will 
crackle and emit sparks ; and these phenomena are 
more or less evident in different persons. All this is 
true and undeniable. The fault has been in theorists 
to assign specific offices to the electric agency in the 
human frame, — offices which it may indeed fulfil, 
but which the march o " experiment has not yet suffi- 
ciently demonstrated that it does fulfil. The inquiry 
has not, as it seems to me, been conducted rightly. 
We have sought, as I said before, to demonstrate the 
presence of electricity in the human body : and that 
was needless. The only sure way of demonstrating 
that any agency in the human body is akin to the 
electric is to identify the laws of action of the two 
forces. 

I think, then, at present, that the most striking fact 
of which I have heard relative to the identity of the 
nervous and electric agencies is the discovery of Des- 
moulins, that the transmission of sensation and motion 
is made by the surface of the spinal marrow, and not 
by its central parts. This is exactly parallel to the 
action of electricity, which is developed only and 
transmitted along the surfaces of bodies. That nerves 
really do conduct a matter similar at least to the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 477 

electric bias been also proved by the fact, that a mag- 
net held between the two sections of a recently di- 
vided nerve was observed to be deflected as by an 

electric current. 

But the kind of electricity which is in the human 
frame La probably a modification of the original prin- 
ciple. In many particulars it bears more resemblance 
to galvanism, and it is really ascertained by experi- 
ments on dead animals that the ncnmis fibre has a 
property of being galvanic ally affected, which (though 
varying of course like ether properties with the con- 
dition el* the substance in which it resides) may be 
called inherent. Seme most interesting experiments; 
by Dr. Elliotson, in which patients, l>\ a reinforce- 
ment of in- smeric power, were -hewn capable of 
swinging round lai htfc, impossible to be even 

lifted by them in then- ordinary condition, prove 

mi the intimate connection between the mesmeric 
medium and the muscular force, which, as every one 

knows, i- dependent on the State of the nerves and 
by them conducted from the brain. It" personal evi- 

dence may he allowed tohave importance. 1 may add 
that 1 am of an electric temperament, so much bo, that 
long ago, when a child. 1 used to amaze and even 
alarm my young companions by combing my hair 
before them in the (lark and exhibiting to them the 
electric coruscations. < tf < ourse, also, this phenome- 
non take- place most remarkably in a dry, and, there- 
fore, non-conducting atmosphere. Now between this 
electrical endowment and whatever mesmeric proper- 
tie- I may possess, there is a perfect relationship and 
parallelism. Whatever state of the atmosphere tends 



478 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

to carry off electricity from the body hinders in so 
far my capacity of mesmerising ; and whatever state 
of the atmosphere tends to accumulate and insulate 
electricity in the body, promotes greatly the power 
and facility with which I influence others mesmeri- 
cally. 

My feelings of bodily health also vary with the 
plus or minus of electricity ; and, perhaps, did persons 
oftener attend to such things, a similar phenomenon 
might not uncommonly be remarked. This at least 
we may admit, that the welfare of the human body 
depends on the equilibrium or proper distribution of 
its forces, and that the electric is one of these just as 
much as heat or oxygen. The mesmeric force has, 
more than any other, been shown to be inherent in 
man ; and, taking all the above facts into considera- 
tion, it s by no means a strained conclusion that it 
actually is that particular modification of electricity 
which is appropriate to the human constitution. When, 
then, after having mesmerised a person. I have a pe- 
culiar feeling of loss of strength and general uneasi- 
ness, which can by no means be traced to usual causes, 
I am compelled to consider this as a proof that 1 have 
suffered by a temporary destruction of equilibrium 
in that medium wherewith I have charged another 
person, — that medium, namely, which we have 
agreed to call mesmeric. That which greatl adds to 
the presumption is the fact that there is gain in the 
patient as there is loss in the mesmeriser. The ten- 
dency of mesmeric influence to restore the equilibrium 
to the bodily forces is manifest. Under its beneficial 
action I have seen headaches cured, fatigue dissipated. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 479 

and trifling bodily ailments removed in a short time. 
How much it calms and equalizes the circulation was 
shown in the case of Anna M , whose pulse, agi- 
tated by fever, was rendered even and natural after 
the occurrence of the mesmeric slumber. I have had 
Occasion also to remark that my own sense of ex- 
haustion bore a perceptible relation to that which I 
was called upon to cure. In mesmerising the weak, 
even when using very slight exertion, I have found 
myself more than commonly fatigued. A young lady, 
whom I mesmerised occasionally at Antwerp, and 
who wa< in delicate health, remarked once to me, 
with that quick perception of every thing relative to 
mesmerism which persons under that influence dis- 
play. — " I am afraid it is a great fatigue to you to 
mesmerise me, because I feel so much strengthened.' 3 
It was perfectly true. 

A medical man at Berne told me also that he once 
undertook, by mesmerism, to treat a lady who was 
suffering from periodical convulsive fits. By mes- 
merising her every day a little before the hour when 
the fits usually came on. he first deferred, and finally 
altogether prevented, the recurring attacks of the 
malady : hut he himself suffered in a singular man- 
ner. Sometimes, after mesmerising his patient, he 
would faint away from the consequent exhaustion. 

From these facts, as it seems to me, there is every 
reason to conclude that the principle of mesmeric 
action is a disturbance of equilibrium, and that its 
mechanical effects may be all explained by differ- 
ences (> f positive and negative, of plus and minus, in 
the mesmeriser and the patient. 



480 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

Add to these features of coincidence between elec- 
tric and mesmeric agency, that both are subject to 
actions and reactions, and that the one, like the other, 
may be accumulated in bodies to a great extent with- 
out producing any sensible change in their proper- 
ties ; and it is impossible but that the analogy be- 
tween the two media should appear remarkable. 

Thus generalizing, we have arrived at the point to 
which all science seems tending, — namely, the de- 
monstration of an ethereal medium, of which all other 
agencies are but the effects. Should 1 have been 
successful in proving ihe existence of a mesmeric 
agency and its connection with other actions of mat- 
ter, I trust that I may be allowed, dot to have 
nulled, but to have extended the sphere of former 
knowledge. I have only exhibited that ether, which 
Newton imagined and subsequent philosophers have 
proved to exist, in a new point of view and engage d 
in new offices. I have shown that that medium is 
the proper organ of the mind, and the transmitter of 
all sensation, — that its motions are identical with 
thought, and are not the accidental, but the perma- 
nent, language of sentient beings. Let our contri- 
bution be received. The question, — Can mesmer- 
ism take its stand among the sciences ? i< even now 
decided. Even now mesmerism is a science ot ob- 
servation. They who have always rejected the mo- 
dulatory theory may be pardoned for rejecting it on 
the present occasion : but they who allow it will not 
be excusable, should they refuse to trace it in a new 
and most interesting department of its agency : — at 
least, they cannot but confess it to be capable of the 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 481 

effects now ascribed to it. What then will be 
thought should the very supporters of the undulatory 
system desert us here — reject our facts as absurd, 
and proscribe, in this particular instance only, the 
hypothesis that would render them credible, nay, 
even n« <•< ssarj 1 

An el&stie ether, modified by the nerves, and the 
Conduction of which depends on their condition; 
which run be thrown into vibration immediately by 
the mind of man. and mediately by the nervous sys- 
tem : which manifests itself when thrown out of 

equilibrium, and produces mental effects through un- 
usual Stimulation of the brain and nerves, cannot but 
be allowed to be a cause which answers to all the 
conditions thai we desire to unite, and which is 
sufficient t<> account for tin- phenomena that we have 
l>< i ii considering. And, !><• it remembered ever, we 
have not created tin- medium tor our purposes, — 

the necessities Of the Case have created the medium 

for ii-. as alone adequate to the production of certain 

effects which do really and visibly exist. 

Even should my theory of undulations be rejected, 
we cannot but conclude that in mesmerism there is 
an especial agency. Not one argument against the 
reality of its existence i- available, while; on the other 
hand, a ma>s of positive evidence demonstrates that it 
does exist Should then the learned at once refuse 
to examine and to believe, I own that I shall feel 
surprise. But, that the world in general should reject 
mesmerism, till the great leaders of opinion have 
marshalled the way to its precincts, I not only expect, 

41 



482 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

but am ready to forgive, since there are so many re- 
ceived truths (as they are called) from which it seems 
incorrect to differ, and which the most part of man- 
kind carry about, as Foster says we do our characters 
and our w T atches, without scrutinizing of what they 
are composed. In the mean time let me, at least, in 
drawing to a conclusion, set forth the claims of mes- 
merism to general attention — to the philosopher as 
a philosopher — to man as man. My own debts to 
this despised science are too many and too various to 
permit me to leave undischarged this duty towards 
others and myself. 

First, in a philosophical point of view, mesmerism 
may be affirmed not only to touch nearly, but to 
throw light on, questions which have long agitated 
the intellectual world. 

One of the most interesting of these is whether 
there may not exist a special though invisible agency 
appropriate to the nervous system, through which 
sensation is accomplished 'and animal motion per- 
formed. Charles Bonnet of Geneva, a century ago, 
suggested that there was an elastic ether resident in 
the nerves in a manner analogous to that in which 
the electric fluid resides in the solid bodies along 
which it is conducted. He says. •• Should we admit 
that there is in the nerves a fluid, which in subtilty 
and elasticity resembles light, or ether, by the help of 
such an agency we may easily explain the celerity 
with which external impressions are communicated 
to the mind, and that with which the mind executes 
so many diversified operations." ( Estot Anal. chap, v.) 

This suggestion has been variously received, or 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 483 

combated, but never absolutely dropped or decided 
one way or the other, so recent a writer as Mrs. 
Somerville (who may be supposed to represent the 
prevailing authorities of the day) allowing that the 
galvanic fluid " may ultimately prove to be the cause 
of muscular action." ' 

Now it appears to me that mesmerism is more cal- 
culated to decide this point than galvanic batteries or 
experiments on the divided nerves of dogs and rab- 
bits 

We have Been that, iii cases of mesmeric sympathy, 
the actual sensation of one person is transferred ac- 
curately to another: bo also the mental action of the 
mesmerise! can — so to -peak — perform motion in 
another. I have actually seen mesmerised persons 
make the ni< >-t laughable faces simultaneously with 
their mesmeriser, though the latter was standing quite 
behind them. If he put out his tongue, the patient 

also protruded his; it' ho wrinkled his brow, the pa- 
tient wrinkled big brow likewise. These things may 
appear ludicrous — to those who view but the out- 
side ot* things they are purely so ; but to the thought- 
ful inquirer every trifle connected with a grave subject 
i- of importance 

Be it remembered that the phenomenon of which 

are are speaking does not take place indifferently in 
all cases of mesmeric relationship between two per- 
sons ; but only (with few exceptions) when the mes- 
meriser exerts his will and attention to that particular 
end. Where indeed the relation between the parties 

1 Connexion of the Physical Sciences, p. 331, 



484 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

is very strong, the patient is apt, as it were involun- 
tarily, to adopt the gestures and mode of walking of 
his mesmeriser. He is as a machine swayed ever by 
the volition of the latter. But in general the con- 
nection between particular acts of will and intention, 
originating with the mesmeriser, and particular mo- 
tions occurring simultaneously in the patient, is 
marked and decisive. The inference is irresistible. 
One mind originates motion in two bodies ; one act 
tends to two performances. The medium, set in 
motion between mesmeriser and patient, does not, in 
this instance move the latter in the manner of a mere 
stick or rod ; it is plainly impulse as well as guide, 
and conveys to the motory nerves of the patient the 
exact impulsion which it takes from the will of the 
mesmeriser. Whatever be the force which has moved 
the muscles of the one, precisely the same degree of 
that force is meted out to the muscles of the other. 

I may now ask whether the mesmeriser, having 
thus in the truest sense performed musculai motion 
in another, and evidently by a medium (lor actions 
are not propagated save by transference from atom 
to atom), may not legitimately infer that what is so 
efficient to influence the nerves and muscles of an- 
other person is also adapted to act upon his own and 
is capable of the production of that very effect in 
himself which he has remarked in another? So 
also, when he extends, as it were, to his patient, or 
rather gives action to, a medium of sensation the 
finest and most delicate imaginable, may he not at 
least conjecture that a similar medium of sensation 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 485 

is employed in conveying to himself impulsions 
from the external world ? 

But to consider the matter more closely. The 
first effect of mesmerism is a bodily sleep, from which 
volition seems to be absent. In such a state, that it 
is not natural for persons to get up and walk must 
be conceded. Constitutional sleepwaking is the 
affliction of but a few. and of those who are mes- 
merised scarcely one perhaps has been addicted to 
Bleepwaking. In accordance with this, it will be 
remembered that, in my cases of mesmeric sleep- 
vraking, the patient always manifested at first the 
strongest reluctance to move, nor indeed would stir 
until compelled by the strong command of the mes- 
iMriser. There is. then, at such moments as the 
patient is moving, a force in operation entirely op- 
posed to B natural desire, and of Sufficient strength 

to prevail over that natural desire. But this is not 
all: we have not here a common case 6f sleep wak* 
ing, whom only phenomenon is that motion ordi- 
naril] performed with consciousness is performed 
unconsciously; but we have sleepwaking directed by 
an external force ; we have even, be it remembered, 
motion coftfentatteous with the motion of another, as 
often as the mesmeriser wishes to produce the phe-* 
nomenon, We have the nerves of motion inert and 

incapacitated one inon ; brought the next into 

involuntary action. 

Professor Agassiz, who could not of himself stir a 

muscle when m£sm< rised, moved, when impelled by 

me. like an automaton across the room. Even while 

retaining his consciousness enough to resist rny ef- 

41* 



486 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. " 

forts, by mere gestures, without contact of any kind, 
to move his limbs, he subsequently owned that he was 
actually compelled into such motions as I wished 
him to perform. Surely a phenomenon like this can 
be interpreted but in one manner. The mesmeriser 
restores to his patient's nerves of motion that force, 
the previous abstraction of which rendered them in- 
capable. Whether that force be galvanic or not is 
a different question. 

Again, pins have been thrust into the flesh of 
healthy persons during the mesmeric slumber, and 
they have betrayed do mark of feeling. Now, in such 
cases, it is plain that the nerves, which ordinarily 
convey sensations of touch to the mind, are as in- 
efficient to propagate impulsions upward to the brain, 
as if they had been tied or cut. — But wherefore? 
The nerves have been neither tied nor cut : they 
have undergone no alteration that we can perceive. 
What are we then to conclude but that they have 
ceased to become conductors to some invisible force 
which is indispensable to their action ? For. lo ! the 
same person who does not feel pins thrust into his 
own flesh betokens sensibility to the slightest injury 
which can be otlered to his mesmeriser. and that not 
merely by a simple idea conveyed in some way to 
his mind, but by an actual impulsion on a nerve of 
touch ; for he will raise his hand to the part of his 
body corresponding with that which suffers pain in 
the mesmeriser. Seeing this, what can we surmise 
but that the nerve which was so lately inactive has 
been restored to action by the very force whose 
absence marred its efficiency: — that the mesmeriser 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 487 

communicates to his patient not merely a conductor, 
but a means, of sensation ? And impressions of this 
kind are conveyed in no other way to the patient; 
for, unless the mesmeriser act, his nervous extremi- 
Orc in genera] as dead. 

Since then ire see the motory and sentient powers 
of the mesmerised person as active through the mes- 
meris r as they were shown to be powerless in them- 
selves, we inter that the latter restores the very force 
through the obstruction of which they become in- 
efficient 

And thllfl a new antecedent to EH ination and pal- 
pable motion becomes manifest : for, however uncer- 
tain a person may be thai there ifl an intermediate 

acy between his own will and the motions of his 
own body, he cannot doubt that there is an inter- 
mediate agency between himself and the motions he 

produces in another: and again, however doubtful 

he may be that his own nerves, in sensation, are but 
conductors to some more efficient force, he must be 
certain that he produces sensation in another person, 
not by nerves merely, but by some invisible medium 
toting on those nerves and restoring to them their 
capacities. And that this is all effected by one me- 
dium seem- certain, lor the mesmeriser can concen- 
trate its motory and sentient efficacy into one act; 
as when be handle- a ball, or other object, and the 

patient (with his back turned and at a distance) goes 
through the same motions; and, by sympathetic 
feeling, becomes aware what it is that the mesmeriser 
holds in his hand. It would be perhaps rash to say 
that hence he may decidedly infer that motion and 



488 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

sensation are performed by a medium in himself; yet 
speculation cannot but tend that way, and surely he 
may be forgiven if he supposes that he reads and 
scans, as by reflection in a faithful mirror, the mys- 
teries of his own being in the manifested operations 
of his who sympathizes with him so wondrously. 
This, at least, is clear : — if ever we hope to arrive at 
a just notion of what has been called the nervous 
energy, it must be through means like these. Only 
thus can we at once demonstrate its existence, and 
analyze its nature. The action on ourselves of 
those powers which constitute our vitality is too 
near us, too intimately blended with our being, to 
form a subject of personal contemplation. Our un- 
consciousness of their agency is a law of our being, 
and has hitherto been the great argument against 
admitting the very existence of a nervous medium, 
which, however plausibly presented to reason, can 
in no way be rendered palpable to sense. Here, 
however, the mesmeriser, Seeing that he is uncon- 
scious how he actuates the person whom he sways. 
while that he docs actuate him through a medium is 
manifest by visible signs, perceives that his igno- 
rance, how he feels or performs his own voluntary 
movements, is no proof whatever that he may not 
unconsciously use, both in sensation and in motion, a 
subtile, elastic, and ethereal medium. 

While physiologists have been engaged in surmis- 
ing or disputing the existence of a nervous agency, 
metaphysicians, on their parts, have transferred the 
question into a more spiritual region, speculating on 
the strange .marriage between mind and matter, and 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 489 

proposing, in order to effect a union between such 
opposite*!, an intermediary partaking of the qualities 
of both. That a link does really seem wanting be- 
tween the mind and the grosser matter with which 
we are visibly surrounded is to be presumed from 
the subject having engaged men's attention from the 
earliest ages; from the period when the ancient phi- 
losophy devised intermediary images of things, to 
that in which Cudworth imagined a plastic mediator. 
This palpable hiatus between the visible and the invis- 
ible — the subtile and the -toss — mesmerism seems 
Calculated to supply. Let nic not for one moment be 
misundt tstood. 'The notion of a halt-intelligent me- 
dium l- as absurd a jumble as the idea of a half- 
thought would be. Mind cannot be cut up into 
ti.tcii »n- : ;ifi«l t<> divide it, or mingle it with matter, 
in any way 3 w jusl the same as if we were to talk 
of pounds of intell< quare inches of rationality. 

When I m>< ;ik. then, of the possibility of a medium 
subsisting between the mind and the grosser mani- 
Ltions of matter, I must by no means be con- 
ceived to intimate that this medium partakes in any 
of the qualities of spirit In this respect I 
peri..-' with Sterne. " The ancient philoso- 

phy materialized spirit, and the modern, in order to 
be even with it. has spiritualized matter. What cx- 
lr« tnea arc men liable to run into, who depart one 
line from common & rise." Besides, this petitio prin- 
cijtii is altogether useless, and explains nothing. 
Thought and sensation are in the mind alone. The 
latter — sensation, at hast, seems brought there from 
afar, but we cannot shorten the road. When we 



490 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

have traced it to the brain, it has still a journey to 
perform, as long and as difficult as ever, — the tran- 
sition, namely, from motion to thought, from a sign 
to an idea, from matter to spirit ; and, however we 
may deem that we facilitate the passage by a medium, 
half-mind, half-matter, we in reality have left the op- 
posing principles just where they were. We have 
only assumed the very point which we were desirous 
of proving. I would, then, plainly state that I re- 
cognize only two grand divisions in nature, namely, 
of cogitative, and incogitative — that which thinks, 
and that which thinks not. Yet that, in a different 
sense, there may exist a medium between sensible 
objects and the mind, I trust to demonstrate is not 
impossible. 

Striving to arrive at the true source whence arises 
so obstinate an idea in us of a medium between mind 
and matter, I imagine it, like most of our notions, to 
proceed from the ground of our own personal experi- 
ence. We see and know that we never move matter 
external to ourselves except through the medium of 
our own bodies. Our minds we fed to be inadequate 
per sc to stir one atom of extraneous matter. In the 
same way we feel and know that all information re- 
specting internal things comes to the mind through 
the medium of the body ; and, apart from this me- 
dium, we feel that our minds are inadequate to take 
cognizance of external objects. Hence arises in the 
mind a general proposition that mind affects matter, 
or is affected by matter only through a medium ; and 
we carry this piece of reasoning even into the pre- 
cincts of our own corporeal frame — conceiving that 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 491 

this also, being matter, can only be moved by our 
minds through a medium, and can act on our think- 
ing principle only through a medium. Now this rea- 
soning, though imperfect, is not altogether null and 
baseless. Thai mind can only act on matter through 
a medium, and vice versa, is, indeed, a false proposi- 
tion ; for allowing a medium, however ethereal, be- 
tween the mind and brain, we eannot but allow that 
medium itself to be matter, unless indeed we fall into 
the old absurdity of a half-intelligent medium. Still 
there are media which manifestly exist, and are made 
evident in their effects; which, though they cannot 
hfl in any wav confounded with mind, inasmuch as 
they are incogitative, do really differ from our com- 
mon notion- of matter in many particulars ; — I -peak 
of media, to w Inch we may apply that which Dr. Ma- 

culloch ha- beautifully -aid concerning tight. •• Em* 
ponderable, intangible, incapable of being arrested 
and accumulated, ever under the mod rapid motions, 

though we cannot discover a projectile force; coming 
\\< know not how. and vanishing we know not where, 
it is in all I mt the power of though! a spirit." Now 
to matter in general we a rtainly attach the ideas of 
weight and palpable soliditj ; and though, when we 
my of the ethereal medium that it is co-extensive 

with space, and composed of impenetrable, indivisi- 
ble atoms, we really classify it with matter, still there 
is a lurkin- feeling in the mind which creates a dis- 
tinction between matter of go ethereal a texture and 
that which we can see, weigh, and handle. Why 
matter of tin- nature should seem to us more adapted 
to act upon mind, and vice versa, than any other sort 



492 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

of matter, we can perhaps give no very philosophical 
reason ; yet the fact is that there is some such notion 
in the mind of most persons. 

But, again, this notion is really in harmony with 
some striking facts. The grosser media, which are 
palpable to our senses, act upon and modify the finer 
media, which are in truth always the most forceful 
and pervading ; but are either not palpable to our 
senses, or are perceived only by such a sense as sight, 
which is in truth a complicated intellectual operation. 
The atmosphere modifies the electric principle, and 
its insensible action on our bodies ; the atmosphere 
modifies light, and adapts it to the visual capacities 
of man. Light itself has been recently conjectured 
to depend on electrical actions and reactions. Should 
this prove to be so, and should subsequent experi- 
ments demonstrate that man communicates with his 
own body through electric agency, the following 
proposition, now but a theory, would gradually evolve 
itself. Grosser media act on the finer, the finest on 
the mind of man ; and again the mind of man reacts 
from finer to grosser media. I confess that to a sys- 
tem like this the phenomena of mesmerism incline 
me to lean ; while, as it appears to me, the analogies 
of the visible universe tend also to the same conclu- 
sion. In the words of the poet — 

li Look nature through; 't is just gradation all. 
By what minute degrees her scale ascends ! 
Each middle nature joined at each extreme, 
To that above is joined, to that beneath : 
Parts into parts reciprocally shot 
Abhor divorce." 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 493 

Again. Wherever we turn our contemplation, 
there is a manifest progression from finer to grosser 
media. An ethereal and infinitely subtile fluid, per- 
vading the realms of space, is the first known step 
from Deity to matter. Distributed through this, and 
probably condensed from the prime element, are dis- 
cerned masses of a luminous substance, which have 
received the name of nebuke from astronomers. 
Amidst these [ominous masses, which constitute the 
first traces of matter of which we have ocular evi- 
dence are beheld certain nuclei, forming the germs 
of future suns or worlds. So, al least, we may safely 
conjecture: lor all geolog] goea to prove that " all 
this fair variety of things/ 5 which our earth displays, 
was once in a fluid, or rather gaseous, state. Nay, 
there needs but a sufficient application of the uni- 
versal sotyent — heat, to melt down all again into 
fluidity and vapor. Thus, again, with science, we 
arrive at a primal, universal element, such as is now 
Supposed to be the substratum even of the gases: 
and this element (I speak it with reverence) is the 

firsl demonstrated action of the AJmighty mind. 

It' I err in thus expressing myself, I err with no 
less an authority than Milton, who speaks of light as 
the fust effluence of divine power: — 

•• Sail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven, first-born, 
Or of the Eternal eoSternal l»- am, 

Ifl r. I i \ >:-■— thee DnbJamed ; since God is light, 

And never but in nnapproached Light 

Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, 
Bright effluence of bright essence increate. 
Or Dearest thou rather, pure ethereal stream, 
Whose fountain who shall tell r Befoie the Sun, 

42 



494 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ■ 

Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice 
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest 
The rising world of waters dark and deep, 
Won from the void and formless infinite." 

Now that, in mesmerism, a subtile medium is set 
in motion by the mind has been proved, but whether 
this be accomplished through the intermediate agency 
of the brain, or whether the brain itself is moved by 
the medium — whether, in brief, the brain or the 
medium be most proximate to the mind, it is impos- 
sible for us to decide with absolute certainty, it being 
evident that a man must be palpably proved to have 
acted without a brain before the question can be 
finally settled. There is, however, a sort of reluc- 
tance in the mind (instinctive. 1 grant, and not phi- 
losophical,) to conceive that spirit can act at once 
and directly on nerve and lihre. and. above all, on 
a torpid viscUS like the brain, which may be ent and 

pierced without the subject of such an operation 
being conscious of any particular feeling. Rather 

we incline to imagine thai an impalpable ethereal 
medium, such as the mesmeric, must be the next 
thing to mind itself. A medium differing in bo far 

from ordinary matter, as it is set in motion by the 
human mind immediately. In such a sense only 
could we admit the existence of an intermediary 
between mind and matter. 

So much may be said without much thought or 
careful induction : but, when we come to examine 
into the principles of common muscular motion, we 
are compelled to use stronger language. The physi- 
ologist here cannot fairly have recourse to his old 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 495 

stalking-horse of vital action, on which he hobbles 
away bo often, when pressed for an explanation of 
the mysteries of our frame. He himself must grant 
that it is will which originates and governs the 
duration of muscular contraction. He must also 
grant that contraction cannot take place without the 
immediate influence of the brain and nerves — though 
what thai inilu./ir, \< he very wisely forbears to tell 
ii-. Muscular motion, then. i< performed by the will 
or mind (for will 18 but an attribute of the mind), 

through the medium <>t" the foerves. But are the 
nerves <»f themselves ;i medium fitting for this work ? 

Uef ii- examine them, and we shall find nothing 

whatever to account for thru- marvellous capacities; 
The] are, to appearance, the weakest of all weak in- 
struments — mere soft white filaments, enveloped in 
a fine cellular membrane — ami yet the strength and 
the power of all the body i< derived from them! 
Tin- simple fact reduces us to a dilemma, father 
we must believe the nervous substance to be the 
channel of some ulterior and efficient energy, to us 
invisible, or we must admit, according to Pascal's 
generally received definition of a miracle — namely, 
" an effect exceeding the natural force of the means 
employed M — that a constant miracle is taking place 
in our mortal fraipes. Following die good old ad- 
vice of the poet. Who -aid. •• \ec Deus intersit," &c. } 
we rather shrink from attributing to direct divine 
ncy every minute corporeal motion which our 

fancy may incline us to make. It is not the mind 

itself which directly moves the muscle : if it did, we 
should have t<> seek no farther for an adequate agen- 



496 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ^ 

cy, since we have never measured the power of mind 
to move matter. But, as we know, the mind moves 
the muscle indirectly, and through the medium of the 
brain and nerves. In this case there is a known 
sequence of events ; and a sequence which, as it 
stands at present, is an absurdity. The weak soft 
fibre stirs the muscle, as we are told, so immediately, 
so mightily, that " its fibres shorten and become hard 
without any preparatory oscillation or hesitation, and 
they acquire all at mux such an elasticity, that they 
are capable of vibrating or producing Bounds;'* 1 
There is nothing in mesmerism more wonderful than 
this, more difficult of digestion to credulity itself, 
when we take the matter as it stands, without bring- 
ing into view an ulterior agency, — an efficient force. 
Why shrink we from so doing? When we look upon 
the heavens, and the magnificent By stem of sidereal 
worlds, harmoniously moving round a common cen- 
tre, we acknowledge all this harmony to be the 
result of a force which we call gravitation. But what 
is the wonder of the universe compared to the mys- 
tery of the mind linked to matter and actuating it I 
It is a mystery; but we need not on that account 
render it an absurdity by inefficient causation — by 
denying the mind an adequate intermediate agency. 
Such denials betray physiologists into great incon- 
sistencies ; as, for instance. Magendie one moment 
censures every attempt to explain muscular contrac- 
tion, and the very next explains it himself by the 
vaguest of vague terms — " cerebral influence." 

1 Magendie. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 497 

affirming, from the strength of maniacs, that "the 
muscular power may be carried to a wonderful de- 
gree by the action of the brain alone."' 

What is this brain, what are the nerves, that they 
should possess such power of action: Is it inherent 
in them ; If so, why does it not endure when man 
has ceased to think and live. Examine a nerve 
apart from the intelligent being it once served, pore 
over it with the microscope ; then take the brain and 
weigh n well, of col it up into sections; where is the 
innate power of action , where is all that may truly he 
called power — namely, the enduring and essentia] 
capacity of originating motion! [f, then, it be an 
absurdity to attribute ;m inherent power of motion to 
flesh and fibre, it is also an absurdity to attribute to 
weal instruments like the nerves an inherent power 
of stirring, in an instant, the strong volume of a 

muscle. And it' the power be not inherent, where 

is it ; Granting all that we can -rant aa regards the 
efficienc] of mind to stir its own organization, we 
must beware how we charge inconsistency upon the 
Creator by supposing Him to violate those laws of 
action which he points out to us by manifest signs; 
and never has our experience shown that by a weaker 
agent we can move a stronger — in a case, too, 
where the disproportion is manifest, and where there 
no connecting links to prepare the way for the 
action of the much weaker upon the much stronger. 
\_am we ask — where are we to look for the force 
that effects such wonders? Now we fear not to ex- 
plain muscular action in the dead by a force that we 
call galvanic Why will we not explain it in the 

42* 



498 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM* 

living by some efficient force at least — for here we 
have equally a sensible phenomenon that calls on us 
for an adequate explanation. I know not what phi- 
losophic doubt may make of this question, but cer- 
tainly common sense decides, from the ordinary phe- 
nomena of muscular motion, that the mind actuary 
dispenses and metes out a material force, of which 
the brain is, perhaps, the elaborator, and the nerves 
decidedly the appointed conductors. This renders 
the question, Whether the mind acts on the body, 
mediately or immediately ? much more easy of deci- 
sion ; and, when we weigh probabilities, inclines the 
balance in favor of those who adhere to the doctrine 
of a medium. 

Finally. When we agree to divide matter into 
ponderable and imponderable, we, in fact, create a 
distinction to the full as great and important as any 
which can be devised by supposing a third substance 
which is neither mind nor matter. And. this distinc- 
tion once admitted, there is no inconsistency what- 
ever in saying that by matter imponderable we com- 
municate with matter ponderable. 

Be it remembered, I assert no more than that mes- 
merism bears on this disputed point ; — that it decides 
the question is not affirmed. But, when we reflect 
that the whole of mesmerism seems to consist in dis- 
carding ordinary intermediaries, such as the external 
mechanism of the senses and the media adapted to this. 
and in arriving at grounds and principles ; above all, 
when we see, by the experiments of Dr. Elliotson. that 
mesmerism can be a succedaneum at least for muscu- 
lar force, enabling the weak to raise heavy weights ; 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 499 

and when again we combine this with all that has 
been just advanced respecting an intermediary in 
muscular action, — surely, all this considered, we 
cannot be far from the belief that the mesmeric me- 
dium is really the long-sought link that was to render 
our system more complete and more harmonious. 

Should ire come to this conclusion, we remove at 
once the objection eg often raised against the \nv ex- 
istence of mesmerism, that its agent cannot — in our 
Usual State at least — be made the object of our 
It is a medium to enable lis to perceive ob- 
ject-, and therefore that it should not be itself a 

direct object of sense seems natural, tight itself is 
the true object of the eye 3 and is, in ( ertain cases, its 

Bole obj.-et : and whether we < ouununicate even with 

this directly may be made a question. Should we 
establish a medium between the mind and all matter 
perceivable by us. -till the principle must here also 
b. adhered to. It would only be in analogy with what 
w< have ascertained in other cases, should we decide 
that we only communicate with light through the 
medium of another and an imperceptible agency. Of 
course the same reasoning will apply to air, and to 
the action of all media on our senses. Such, at least, 
as we ha\e Been, was the view which Newton took of 
the economy of sensation — not giving all his rea- 
■Ons why he did so ; but w ho can doubt but that such 
a mind as hi- kept back within itself more reasoning 
on most Subjects than common thinkers have pro- 
mulgated and found adequate to secure a very tolera- 
ble reputation ? 

But, in truth, the objection to the reality of mes- 



500 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

merism because it cannot be brought before our 
senses, is not worth much. We see it in its effects, 
and of these we can judge by more senses than one. 
The mesmerised, perhaps, being in a different state 
to ourselves, may see or feel indications at least of 
this subtile agent, when they speak of perceiving a 
kind of fine vapor, or electric light. If so, the essen- 
tial difference between the mesmeric and the normal 
state would consist in the power of being sensible to 
the very medium which furnishes the means of sense. 

But, in truth, what is the invisible ? The micro- 
scope will prove our vision to be capable of a devel- 
opment, the limits of which will not easily be found. 
Revealed by this, " world within world inclosed " 
will burst upon our sight, where we had supposed a 
void. It would be, then, ridiculous to make the ex- 
istence of a medium between mind and body de- 
pendent on the cognizance of our senses as at pre- 
sent constituted. That which is not discerned by us 
may be clearly seen by more spiritual optics. I should 
be sorry if my existence depended on the perfection 
or imperfection of some persons' organs of sight and 
general sensibility. 

Indeed, if we lay to heart the deceptiveness and 
mutability of all the external species of matter, at 
the same time considering that we have no reason to 
deem it capable of change in its ultimate and imper- 
ceptible particles ; if also we reflect that whatever is 
not palpable in itself yet is indicated by its effects, 
forces us on pure reason by withdrawing at once the 
aid and the illusion of our external senses : we shall 
perhaps come to the conclusion that the invisible is 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 501 

the only true, exclaiming with the old Latinist, " In- 
visibilia non decipiunt." 

These remarks will be received with indulgence or 
not. by no means according to their merit, but ac- 
cording to the turn and character of each several 
reader's mind ; and this observation involves a gene- 
ral truth not sufficiently attended to. We all have 
our own modes of reasoning, and, as our minds are 
analytic or synthetic, we love those who never reach 
or those who jump to a conclusion. Again, some 
delight in all theories, and some love nobody's theo- 
ri< - but their own. Now, whether I belong to those 
who hastily snatch up an hypothesis, because it so 
nicely accounts tor things, or to those who draw de- 
ductions, because their reason is Convinced, I leave 
toothers to decide ; that is, provided they be of a 
party who decide on any thing. For my own part I 
confess my weakness, I like to come to a decision; 

and herein 1 am at a manifest disadvantage, for in 
all ages the doubters have lorded it greatly over the 
deciders. It is so grand, and > () philosophic to doubt 
even of one's own senses. 

1 leave the world to apply this to mesmerism gene- 
rally. Whether the speculations into which this sin- 
gular subject leads ds almost without our wills be or 
be not generally acceptable, it must be ( vned that, 
in suggesting to us a mode of sensation more direct 
and worthy of the mind itself than the common, they 
do us no ill service ; and surely we cannot grossly err 
in giving to thought so swift-winged a messenger of 
volition, so subtile a vehicle of sensibility, as the 
mesmeric medium. 



502 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

The idea of nature's constitution, which the appre- 
hension of such a medium excites, are at once com- 
prehensive and ennobling ; and the philosopher, who 
desires to have large views of man and of creation 
in general, cannot take his stand on a better vantage- 
ground than the one which the inquirer into mes- 
merism is compelled to occupy. Thus expanded, his 
mind can scarcely fail to be cured of that dogmatism 
which cries out " impossible " to all that is not within 
the narrow round of its own experience. The first 
time of witnessing a successful experiment in mes- 
merism must be an era in the life of every thinking 
being ; while the student in this science, who at 
length arrives at the knowledge of an ethereal me- 
dium, connected with all animated beings and with 
thought in particular, beholds a flood of light illumi- 
nating mysteries which have probably long weighed 
on his heart and brain. He beholds all life and in- 
telligence at once connected and individualized — 
reciprocally connected in all its parts universally with 
God; and he has a glimpse at least of the waves of 
the great ocean agitated by thought eternal, and 
tending to thought again in the limited portions of 
intelligence which the Almighty has gifted with in- 
dividual consciousness. 

Should his mind be less excursive, should he study 
mesmerism with practical severity ; still he cannot 
but view it with interest as a link between sciences 
at present disunited or standing remotely connected. 
Physics and metaphysics are now at daggers-draw- 
ing ; but here they may embrace and be reconciled. 
It so evidently touches on all and blends all. With- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 503 

out it the connection of the physical sciences is in- 
complete, for this alone concentrates them personally 
in man. I cannot for a moment doubt that a future 
generation will hail mesmerism as the very note 
which was wanting to render all nature harmonious, 
as the key which fits every ward of knowledge and 
unlocks all the treasures of science. The ornitho- 
rhyncus was deemed at first a fictitious creature, 
1 jut was found at last to be the very link that was 
Wanting to the animal creation. 

Let me hope that if, in endeavoring to advance a 
consummation bo desirable, I have fallen into scien- 
tific enora or partial inadvertences, 1 niay be for- 
given on the -coir of motive at least ; though 1 am 
quite willing t<> be charged with the fault, provided 
mesmerism l><" not blamed. In setting forth a new 
oce there is always a probability that errors will 
be committed, especially in setting forth a science 

like this, winch to Solve entirely Would be to solve 

the riddle of man. 

There is one imputation, however, from which I 
shall with difficulty escape, a charge of which I fear 
not even my own conscience ran acquit inc. In the 
first part of this work I uttered disrespectful words 

arding those who. treating on mesmerism, took 
occasion to frame systems of the universe; and now, 
behold. I am myself found guilty of soaring upwards 
from my subject into the regions of space, and of 
drawing from a few despised facts the highest con- 
clusions. So easy is it to blame ; so difficult to avoid 
blame j so difficult, also, when treating of man, not 



504 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

to touch upon lofty topics and to be led even una- 
wares to speculate on the sublimities of creation. 

It remains for me now to exhibit mesmerism in 
such points of view as regard all men equally, whether 
considered as material or immaterial beings. 

First, as a remedial agent, mesmerism, when better 
known, cannot but be universally important and in- 
teresting. That it should not already be so is only a 
proof how inveterate prejudice can be, then most 
when most irrational. When we see persons eagerly 
running after every new or old new-revived remedy, 
consenting to be starved, as is now the fashion in 
Germany (where men are mad for what is called 
the hunger-cure) ; or to have their insides drenched, 
Sangrado-like, with water ; or to sit smilingly plunged 
up to the neck in mud. When we see such instances 
of more than martyr fortitude displayed too on the 
occasion of every trifling, or perhaps imagined, mal- 
ady, we cannot but wonder that mesmerism, so 
fraught with hope and healing to the human race, 
should be neglected; more especially, too. as its 
therapeutics are neither disagreeable nor disgusting. 
" Blest be the man who first invented sleep," says 
Sancho ; and in this a man lias only to sleep and to 
be cured. 

Not being medical myself, I cannot bring forward 
a number of personally observed cases in which mes- 
merism has been useful. I have, however, sometimes 
mesmerically treated slight indispositions in members 
of my own family with success, and I have had occa- 
sion to be struck generally with the power of mes- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 505 

meric agency to equalize the circulation and to relieve 
pain. I have known it to be particularly successful 
in cases of severe headache — by no means one of 
the least ills ; * which flesh is heir to." On one occa- 
sion, a friend of mine, the Baron de Karlowitz, whom 
I used to mesmerise sometimes for mere purposes of 
experiment, came to me with a severe cold and 
hoarseness, which prevented him from speaking above 
ft whisper. We neither of us had any idea of curing 
thll affection ; yet, after he had been mesmerised for 
about an hour, during the -renter part of which time 
he slept, he rose from his chair perfectly relieved from 
his catarrhal >\mploms. He also found, after I had 

mesmerised him a few times, that he had got rid of a 
chronic rheumatism in one arm. from which he had 
been suffering for many weeks. 

Prom medical friends I have received many parti- 
cular account- of the beneficial agency of mesmer- 
ism : but these the limits of my work do nol allow 
me to detaiL I can only state generally that, as 
might have been expected from the evident action of 
this influence on the nerves, mesmerism is especially 
useful in those derangements of the nervous system 

which arc generally beyond the reach of medicine. 

Epilepsy, palsy, nervous depression, madness even, 
have b icn successfully combated and subdued by 

this, which ma\ most emphatically be called the 
natural remedy. If only in its power to calm, when 
opiates are hurtful and improper, this tranquillizing 
influence is of incalculable value, enabling nature, 
during the periods of repose, to balance and recruit 
her disordered forces. Dr. Foissac, of Paris, has 
43 



506 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

assured me that he has seen men restored to calm- 
ness and finally to health by mesmeric action, when 
suffering in the last stage of spasmodic cholera. Rea- 
soning from analogy, we should conjecture that this 
is probably the only power available to counteract 
hydrophobia. At any rate, the instinct whereby 
persons in the mesmeric state prescribe remedies for 
themselves or others might here be turned to most 
valuable account. The insensibility to bodily suf- 
fering, which has been proved to characterize the 
mesmeric state, may also, as it has already in some 
few instances, prove of the greatest service in ena- 
bling patients to undergo the amputation of limbs, 
or other painful operations. In reply to a question 
I addressed by letter to Dr. Foissac, I received the 
following communication : — 

" Vous pouvez, en toute surety magnetiser des 
femmes enceintes : voua leur ferez beaucoup de bien. 
Quelques Bomnambules on1 accouche sans la plus 
petite souffrance ; dans tout cas le magnetisme rend 
les douleurs trrs supportables." 

The last and most important point of view in 
which we have now to consider mesmerism ifl in its 
reference to the future prospects of man, considered 
as an improvable being, capable of immortality. My 
object here is, as it has heretofore been, at once to 
explain and to utilize mesmerism. Already I have 
cast light on its apparent mysteries : first, by the 
laws of our normal consciousness : secondly, by the 
true nature of sensation : thirdly, by the native force 
and faculties of the mind ; fourthly, by demonstrating 
that, in the mesmeric state, the mind is not only de- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 507 

tacked from its present restricted organs, but gifted 
with a medium of sensation more direct and more 
worthy of itself; and now, finally, I purpose to render 
evident whatever in my subject may jret appear to 
be unexplained, by considering man as a being 
capable of a development unsuited to his present 
era of existence* The subject is most important. 
The otto r topics on which we have been engaged are 
but speculative points, and are comparatively devoid 
of inter* st. 

This COmeS home at once to our business and 

bosoms. Wretched, indeed, must be the view of 

man which confines him to this bank and shoal of 
time, which does QOt regard hun. and all his glorious 

endowments, ss intruded for a «ri< s of existences. 



•• lii .• b) hope, 

An<l bj i '• wee by tin- glad light, 

And breatha the .-wet air of futurity." 

WORD&VI dRTH. 

Here, only, when we doubt, we are vastly too 
humble ; n fusing t«» recognize our own dignity and 

the privileges accorded to humanity. That man is 

improvable and capable of a development, the limits 

of which have not \<t been ascertained, i- his high 
prerogative which distinguishes him from the brute 
creation. Even common life will teach us this: but 
mesmerism, in an especial manner, proves the capaci- 
ties of man to be susceptible of progression ; for it 
not only exhibits him in a state of moral and intel- 
lectual improvement, but in a condition of increased 
sensitive power. Let this propitiate the religious 
mind at least Mesmerism i< no miracle, but a de- 



508 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. ** 

velopment of faculties inherent in man. It is fraught 
with instruction the most holy, so that we may say of 
it that which Galen affirmed of anatomy. — To ex- 
amine it is to sing a hymn to the Creator of all things. 
Here, indeed, " qui studet orat." It calls attention 
to our being, frame, and structure ; and, by proving 
that we have an immaterial principle which is not 
dependent on the organs of sense, it is calculated to 
reclaim to a purer faith the materialist, as it actu- 
ally did reclaim a young French physician, (named 
Georget) of great promise, who. dying, left on writ- 
ten record, desiring it by will to be made public, that 
'mesmerism had convinced liiin that man was not a 
mere compound of organs, but a spiritual as well as 
corporeal being. 

The light which this phasis of our nature gathers 
from and reciprocally sheds on revelation is remarka- 
ble, and to reason's eye most precious. By exhibit- 
ing man as at once delivered from the thraldom of 
his exterior senses and enabled to attain to greater 
heights of moral excellence, it leads one to see that 
there is something mere in the scriptural expression, 
"Sins of the flesh," than a mere form of speech. In 
mesmerism the mind recurs to its native character 
and fundamental endowments, seeming to cast aside 
the accidental differences induced by education, cir- 
cumstances, and neglect of moral discipline. Vsq 
thus learn how great a part of the evil that clings to 
us is our own work, from our omitting to discipline 
and subdue the grosser principle and to combat those 
temptations which are actually engendered by our 
present position and manner of organization. I have 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 509 

been told that some writer lias called mesmerism ik a 
miserable compound of faith and fear/' I can assure 
the author of this sentence that one at least of these 
element- must be wanting to true mesmerism; and 
I would ask him why he should confound faith with 
base things, or identity that holy power with credu- 
lity 3 I would -end him to Thalaba for instruction, 

where, when all that is noMeis to be performed, when 

all that is evil is to he vanquished, 

" The talisman is faith.' 1 

With faith, then, with Christian faith,! would asso- 
ciate mesmerism ; and with thai which so largely pro- 
mises (mother existence it can easily be allied. 

As regards out future state (a question that con- 
cern- ever] mortal being), there is the greatest reason 
to believe that mesmerism is a boon granted by God 
to confirm our faith and to cheer iisori our way. All 
its phenomena combine to identity it with that which 
Coleridge has called " the fundamental life.' 1 As, 
however, in this expression, there may seem to be 
some ambiguity and vaguenetis, especially to such 
persons as have not turned their thoughts to the sub- 
ject we are treating; and as I wish to be particularly 

clear on a point <o important. I shall endeavor to 
explain precisely what is the fundamental life, and 
wherein it differs from the organic. If. in attempting 

this. I adopt, more than I have hitherto permitted 
myself, an d priori and abstracted mode.' of reasoning, 
there will be at least this benefit, — we shall have, 
from pure reason, an additional ground of confidence 
for our belief in an hereafter ; and surely, in respect 
43* 



510 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

of this, we cannot build up the edifice of human 
hope on too strong a foundation, or protect it by too 
many buttresses against the inherent weakness of its 
own imperfection. 

Already I have hinted at a distinction between 
sensation transitory and permanent — occasional and 
fundamental, and have insisted on the necessity of 
taking so large a view of man as to distinguish the 
accidents of his present situation from bis immutable 
character, when considered as a being destined for 
immortality. I now proceed more particularly tode- 
velope this idea. 

No man bath seen God at any time. I'll His works 
alone we can behold Him: they arc. m the truest 
sense, His expressed thoughts; — as the poel saySj 
addressing the Creator, — 

u Glorious ! Because tho shadow of Tliv might, 

A step, or link, lor intercourse with 1 b 

If by the word of revelation w.e learn to discern 

God spiritually and to discover OUT moral relation- 
ship towards Him. we no lessl>y the universal manu- 
script of nature learn to Mew Him. as it were, with 
the eyes of the body, thus enlarging our views of His 
power, wisdom, and design. Without this source erf 
instruction, corporeal as well as intellectual, our re- 
lation to the author of all things, we being composed 
of body and spirit, would be incomplete. 

Now, thus to hold converse with the attributes of 
God, as expressed in the visible creation, is not a 
temporary object ; for we have no reason to sup} 
that matter and its properties, whatever changes they 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 511 

mav undergo, will ever be annihilated : matter, indeed, 
being the only thing respecting which we have sen- 
sible evidence that it perishes not: and from this the 
ii advocate of man's immortality, the poet Young, 
draws a chief argument in favor of his subject: — 

rid of matter, with its fanODJ forms, 

All fe. Life, born from death, 

d shall forever n 11. 
\ ace in being, ! 

\\ ill) ctmn Most High. 

What t" on f ( 'an it be \ 

M •• : .'. Lnd i . .. Spirit die 

Moi« over, on matter hang all our hopes of indivi- 
dual existence, for, as I have before shown, the indi- 
vidualitj of all spirit but God must consist in being 
impacted and restricted, — in being less than pure 
spirit, which the Absolute alone can be, — in having 
a body thrt>ugh which all information respecting the 
original ideas of God being transmitted should be- 
come proper to itself. Reason, then, proclaims exter- 
nal matter^ not less than that portion of it connected 
with ourselves, to have been created for a durable 
exist* nee ; and, this In 'm- 1 1 1< ■ ease, it is evident that 
to bring the mind acquainted with all the qualities of 
the universe is an end and object which remains im- 
mutable, and which, unless we can suppose this 
world to be the be-all and the end-all. and God tobe 
limited in creation and invention, can only be fulfilled 

here m a partial and imperfect manner. Supposing 

man to enter on individual existence for the first 

time in this our planet, it is here he takes his first 
lessons in natural divinity; and it would be indeed to 
charge the Almighty with " change of counsel " and 



512 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

vain expense of mighty means, were we to suppose 
that what man learns here is to be unlearned hereafter. 
Wise earthly parents deal not so with their children. 
Now by what means, at any time, shall we continue 
our process of instruction ? Surely, as we began it ; by 
means of a body, the great purpose of body being to 
connect mind individually with matter and its proper- 
ties. A body, then, that shall endure seems essential 
alike to the continuation of our individual existence, 
and to our continued commerce with the qualities of 
the visible creation. Revelation is perfectly in accord 
with this idea. The Bible philosophically says, at 
man's creation, — " And man became a living soul," 
that is, an individual soul, a soul embodied, and capa- 
ble of communicating with external matter. When 
we say, then, that man is to live hereafter, we also 
affirm that he is to continue embodied ; and in this 
again revelation sanctions the deductions of our rea- 
son, one great object of Christ's mission on earth 
being to preach the resurrection of man with a body. 
Such a body then as would endure, and cleave to the 
mind through all external changes, is. in fact, the 
fundamental life ; while the organic life is but that 
visible and grosser envelop which forms our tangible 
body in this world, and which is furnished with or- 
gans which have especial reference to this particular 
state of existence. 

More briefly : the fundamental life is the body (for 
what is life, in our case at least, but mind incorpo- 
rate ?) that we are to retain throughout eternity. 
The organic life is the body, or means of communi- 
cating with matter, which we now palpably possess, 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 513 

and which may be imagined to be a temporary de- 
velopment of the other, just as leaves, flowers, and 
fruits are the temporary development of a tree. And 
in the same manner that these pass and drop away, 
yet leave the principle of reproduction behind, so 
may our present organs be detached from us by 
death, and yet the ground of our existence be spared 
to us continuously. 

When St. Paul affirms that there is a spiritual 
bod] as well as a natural body, he not doubtfully 
declares the >amc thing. He does, in fact, draw a 

distinction between the body we now have for pur- 
poses connected with the economy of this world and 
the more lasting body which is to connect us with 
the universe in general. He was too good a logician 
to have used the word- "spiritual body" in a vague 
and mystical Bense. Bod] is body, and the only 

differences between one body and another which can 
possibly obtain, are -nidations frotn grosser to liner, 
or the contrary. 

That we should rather evolve from our present 

corporeal elements the body which is to be ours be- 
yond the grave, than begin existence de novo: that, 

in other words, we Bhould reall\ poS8e88 a fundamen- 
tal life, or (to speak more intelligibly) a fundamental 

body, incapable of passing away with the grosser 
covering that envelops it ; that, at death, we should 

retain something physically from our actual condi- 
tion, seems pointed out to us by all the analogies of 
nature. 

Everywhere we behold that one state includes the 
embryo of the next, not metaphysically, but mate- 



514 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

rially ; and entering on a new scene of existence is 
not so much a change as a continuation of what 
went before. A sudden leap from one condition to 
another is not compatible with nature's evident ten- 
dencies. The very rudiments of organs, intended 
in a higher stage of animal life to be useful, are 
found, uselessly as it were, appearing in the lower 
classes of animated creatures, or — stronger still — 
lying in embryo in the same creature in one state, 
only to be developed in another. It is an old allu- 
sion, but ever beautiful, — 



" The wings that form 

The butterfly, lie folded in the worm." 

We should then, a priori, expect to find the prin- 
ciple that individualizes man, and is the true medium 
of his instruction, attached to him from the begin- 
ning, and that the germs of future capacities, physi- 
cal not less than intellectual, should be discoverable 
in his constitution. Here again we arc reminded of 
St. Paul's beautiful comparison between man's tran- 
sitory body and a seed that loses in the ground <>nly 
its exterior husk or covering, while the very circum- 
stance that produces in it a partial loss and decay is 
the occasion of development to that germ which from 
the first included within itself all that it would be 
hereafter. Thus is appears manifest that the apostle 
supposes that, even from analogies before our ej 
we may draw conclusions respecting our future con- 
dition ; — nay, he seems to find this truth so clear 
that he thinks it argues much want of intellect in a 
person not to perceive it, as it is evident by his say- 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 515 

ing, " Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not 
quickened except it die." In another place he 
Strongly intimates that the doctrine of a permanent 
body was not unknown to his converts. " For we 
know," he says, "that if our earthly house of this 
tabernacle (meaning evidently our present body) 
were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' 5 
And with this he- desires, at death, to be u clothed 
upon/ 3 or, in other words, embodied : not wishing 
to be " unclothed," or to be disembodied, which 
would be equivalent to annihilation, as if he were 
tired of existence ; but only longing to depart and 
be with Christ — in other words, to continue exist** 
ence in a more elevated state of being, putting off 
the external weeds, but not the unchanging vesture 
of the spirit 

Prom considerations like these we may surmise 
that the mind i> capable of being organized in two 
ways — visibly and invisibly. It may have a subtile 
envelop, adapted generally to its own active and 

subtile essence, and. in addition to it, it may have a 

rset covering, as our mortal body, adapted to its 
presi nt state of existence and furnished with particu- 
lar organs for particular purposes. The dissolution 
of this coarser covering is by us called death ; that is, 

We seem unto men to die : but with our inner body 

we never part. ami. consequently, by that we still 
retain <»ur hold upon individual existence. As 
Leibnitz has remarked: "There is no such thing 

as death, if tliat word be understood with rigorous 

and metaphysical accuracy. The soul never quits 



516 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

completely the body with which it is united, nor does 
it pass from one body into another with which it had 
no connection before ; a metamorphosis takes place ; 
but there is no metempsychosis." ' 

Let us now examine the validity of our a priori 
reasoning by a reference to the facts of mesmerism. 
Man is shown by these to be capable of increased 
sensitive power. Cui bono — to what end, if here- 
after this increase of faculty become not permanent ? 
Would it be consistent with the goodness of Provi- 
dence to tantalize us by imperfect glimpses of that 
which we shall never be permitted to realize : Would 
wings be folded in the worm if they were not one 
day to enable it to fly J We cannot think so poorly 
of creative wisdom or of thrifty nature. Throughout 
her realms there is no mockery of unmeaning dis- 
plays of power; and. if so. then is mesmerism a 
pledge irrefragable of a future state of existence, 

calculated tor the exhibition of those energies whieh 

are but a promise here. Relative to this subject, 1 
have particular pleasure in remarking the coincidence 
of thought between myself writing on mesmerism 
and an esteemed author, who. in framing a " physical 
theory of another life," has unconsciously borne wit- 
ness by reason to the truth of mesmeric development. 
Such unbought testimony i< precious. He is speak- 
ing of what an enlarged perception might effect 
" Doubtless,-' he says, "the mind might bring its 
percipient faculty into contact with the properties of 
matter more at large and under fewer limitations. 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica — Preliminary Dissertations. 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 517 

The medullary substance we may easily suppose to 
he laid open to sensation otherwise than it actually 
nd also to be endued with a more refined or 
exquisite sensibility. 

•• The mind, perhaps, in its next stage of life, and 
when its active and higher principles have become 

mature, may be well able to sustain and advantage- 
ously t'» use ;i much mare ample correspondence with 

the material world than would now he good or pos- 
sible Perception i- at present a circumscribed facul- 
ty : and we confidently anticipate an era, when it 
shall throw off its confinements, and converse at 
large with the material universe, and find itself fa- 
miliarly at home m the height and breadth of the 

heaven* We maj assume thai it only needs to be 
free from the husk of animal organization to know 

on all ridefl perfectlj thai winch now it knows at 

points only, and in an abated degree. And besides 
knowing effects .it would also know causes. The 

inner form of matter, as il has been termed, may. as 

well as the external species, be discernible. Instead 
Of looking only at the dial-plate of nature, we should 

be admitted to inspect the wheel-work and the 

sprit; 

The above passage offers a delightful contrast to 
those narrow-minded views of man which limit both 
himself and hi Almightj author to the ipa dixit of 

■ peevish sceptic The whole work, from which 

it l- extracted, is worthy of attention, and is in per- 
fect accordance with mesmeric phi nomena ; nor can 
I refrain from believing that its clever author would 

rejoice to Bee realized in this life anticipations which 

44 



518 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

he only framed concerning the next. From his re- 
marks, which we have just cited above, we gather 
that he looks forward to the future enlargement of 
human perception in three several particulars — 
namely, in an increased refinement or sensibility ; in 
an extension of the sphere in which that sensibility 
shall display itself; and in a power of discerning ob- 
jects and their qualities through impediments which, 
in our present state, form insurmountable barriers to 
the action of our senses. Now. in order to behold 
these anticipated prerogatives really conferred on 
human perception, we have only to behold the higher 
phenomena of mesmerism. Not even the commonest 
observer (supposing him to possess common honesty) 
can witness them without being struck with the con- 
viction that a new and more pervading kind of per- 
ception has been opened to the mesmerised person; 

but he who should have reasoned previously (Ml the 
subject, as the author from whom 1 have quoted, 
would at once perceive that every thing which WaiB 
passing before his eyes was in beautiful harmony 
with science, philosophy, and truth. He would be- 
hold that fineness of perception — that enlargement 
of the miners sphere — that power of acting through 
obstacles, which his own reason had told him must 
belong to man when the mechanical restrictions of 
the senses should be laid aside. 

Let me, however, hasten to qualify whatever may 
appear exaggerated in the above statements, lest I 
prepare disappointment for the sanguine, or arouse 
the apprehensions of the timid. In pure compas- 
sion, I would appease the fears of those who deem 



THK MESMERIC MEDIUM. 519 

mesmerism, if true, a perilous truth, that should be 
huddled up from knowledge, and, like the Bible in a 
Catholic laud, be restricted only to the use of the 
initiated. Such persons (and there are such) actu- 
ally dread lest the new science should make man too 
wise, and too powerful, and look Oil it with fear and 
trembling as a pernicious stepping-forward from our 
sphere, — as the very Babel-tower of this era. Let 
these apprehensions subside. In being permitted to 
view the mesmeric state, there is nothing to make 

man proud, but all to keep him humble, while he 

- that the least step out of our present condition 
i- an improvement upon our {acuities, and that phe- 
nomena bo despised, bo vilified by common ridicule, 
are beyond the compass of our powers to achieve. 
Then, too, mesmerism has its restrictions, which keep 
it low to earth, even while it hints of heaveA. Sel- 
dom does n occur in a degree to astonish. Many 
are the condition- it requires for its accomplishment. 
Carefully hedged about is it by the barriers of op- 
posing will, by defective sensibility, even by a spirit 
of scepticism. It- highest capacities are exercised 
with difficulty, its loftiest wonder- arc few and fleet- 
ing, and exhaust evidentlj the person by whom they 
are displayed. Still, it is a rise upon our actual 
existence. Its true office is not to make us confident, 
yet -till to encourage us to hope by the transient and 
imperfect display of faculties, the permanent con- 
tinuance of which would be incompatible with our 
present state of being. 

A state of such manifest development, one* seen, 
would naturally be deemed, as I before have said, a 



520 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

kind of earnest of that which is to come — a corrobo- 
ration of hope, a first-fruit of prerogatives, which, 
though temporary here, should be durable hereafter. 
And it would further be conceived that, as the tran- 
siently-developed faculties were to accompany man 
into a future state of existence, the means through 
which they were developed would also cleave to 
humanity and be assured to its possession. For, as 
we have seen, we do not merely behold in mesmer- 
ism a shadowy advantage, but a tangible benefit, a 
material good, working by material means : an actual 
physical improvement in sensation, brought about by 
the action of a more pervading and subtile medium 
than any of which we have ordinary cognizance* 
Hereby, then, we may be enal>lc<l to exchange the 
abstracted notions of theologians respecting a future 
state, (which, like all other abstracted notions, touch 
the mind but feebly.) for something which may 
satisfy the natural longings of man after the real and 
the permanent, — a conclusion to winch even the 

ideal Hauls. 

We perceive the possibilitj of parting with the 
externals of sensation, vet retaining its inner ground; 
we reason from the partial and temporary abolition 
of the mechanical portions of our being, revealed in 

mesmerism, to the total and permanent abolition of 
those same portions of our being which is to be un- 
dergone in death. As one of inv sleepwakers said 
to me, before 1 had myself conceived such a notion, 
"'The mesmeric state is a tar truer image of death 
than sleep is." All points in mesmerism to an invisi- 
ble means of sensation, as real as it is invisible — a 



THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 521 

means of which the nerves themselves seem to be 
merely the subsidiaries and conducting channels: — 
all points in mesmerism to a finer organ of the mind 
than those which arc palpable and external — an 
otgan to which our visible body is but as a veil, or 

(as the author of the physical theory of another life 

calls it ) a mere " husk of animal organization." These 
are not, be it remembered, mere speculations. They 
arc nil grounded on bets. Facts force on our minds 
a fundamental medium in sensation; facts identify it 
with mesmerism; facts lead us to inter that it is the 
immediate organ of mind — the real element in which 
we hare our being; and facts lead as to hope that it 
will serve us permanently in another state of exist- 
ence. It' our f< i lings Lad that waj . our reason not 
less an companies and sanctions their instinotive ap- 
peal. The demonstrated connection of mesmerism 
with the \ i t;il principle (or action) in man; the strik- 
ing manner in which sleepwakers have been shown 
to cling to their mesmeriser, as if in governing the 
mesmeric medium he held the talisman of their be- 
— as it', in touching this, he roused all the instincts 
of self-preservation; the important. nay, essential, 
otlic- which the medium has been shown to fulfil in 

saltan, all proclaim forciblj that the agency we 
have been considering may with truth be called the 
fundamental life. It abounds with instances wherein 
its own permanent and universal action is contrasted 
with the transitory and partial operations of the 
organic life. 

With facts like these before us, where, but to the 
mesmeric medium, shall we look fo«r indications of 

44* 



522 THE MESMERIC MEDIUM. 

that inner body — that germ of a better existence, 
which analogy shows must be so intimate a part of 
us, and which is nevertheless so much a stranger to 
ourselves ? Where, but in the medium of the funda- 
mental sensation, shall we look for the fundamental 
life ; for are not, in truth, life and sensation identi- 
fied in their purpose, at least, of bringing us into 
sensible connection with the world of matter ? This 
being admitted, there is no difficulty in conceiving 
that this action, as relates to the mesmeric medium, 
shall be continuous. As now it so manifestly appears 
to be an intermediate between us and our present 
body, so hereafter it may become the means of link- 
ing us to a new organization ; or it may itself remain 
as our spiritual body, appropriated to us in a certain 
portion, when this visible and fleshly tabernacle is 
dissolved to its primal elements. Where shall we 
find so obedient a servant to our commands. — where 
force to our strong desire after individual existence, — 
where an agency so swift, powerful, and penetrating, 
so near to our essence, so kindred to our thoughts ? 
In proportion as we value whatever tends to bridge 
our way across the gulf of death, whatever tends to 
carry on a train of old familiar thought into the un- 
known void, let us esteem, cherish, and reverence 
this cheering manifestation of our being, which so 
beautifully exhibits a preexistent harmony between 
our human hopes and their accomplishment. That 
the mesmeric medium should link science to science 
is comparatively but a trifling benefit. That it should 
connect this world with a future is its last and great- 
est service. 



A P P E N D I X . 



REPORT 



BOSTON COMMITTEE 



ANIMAL MAGNETISM 



■ Hi: l TED BT 



DR. ROBERT II. COLLYER. 



At a large an) i the citizens of Boston, 

the evening of the 32d of June, 

A. D. L841,Drs, Abner Phelps, Winslow Lewis, Jr., and Fran- 

ppointed ■ committee to select twenty-four 

gen' the three learned professionfl in this city, for the 

purpose of investigating the claims of Animal Magnetism, as 
exhibited by Dr. ( Jollyer. 

The following gentlemen baring been requested to attend to 
that duty, signified their acceptance of the appointment, and 
subsequently met at the Temple: — 

Rev. tleasts. & . 1 1 . Muzzy, Ad- 

am.-, i., and Jons; James, Poweb, 

r, TOLMAN, I' . and PLIMPTON, Esqrs. ; 

Doctors STORES, Lane, MoBBELL, Flint, Dana, Strong, In- 
galls, Lewis, and Stedm 

This committee associated with them several gentlemen, 
among whom were Doctors Adams and Stone, who attended 
some of the sittings. 



526 APPENDIX. 

Friday, 10 A. M., June 25th, 1841. 

The committee organized by choosing Dr. William Ingalls, 
Chairman, and Dr. Francis Dana. Secretary. 

Dr. Collyer performed the customary manipulations upon his 
boy Frederick, which were followed by the usual appear- 
ances. Many attempts were made by members of the com- 
mittee to arouse him — sach as stretching him upon the floor, 
and firing two large pistols near his head — but without elicit- 
ing any symptoms of consciousness, unless it were in a spasm 
in the arm (tetanus), the like of which had been occurring for 
more than a quarter of an hour previous, and which happened 
at one of the discharges. 

At this time, a lad was introduced, who was suffering under 
the affection called chorea, or St. Vitus's dance. In answer to 
inquiries if any one knew him, the Rev. Mr. Stowe said he was 
a member of his church, and had been for several years, and 
was very exemplary; and, moreover, that he knew there could 
be no collusion between him and Dr. C. — Dr. C. having per- 
formed the passes upon him for about fifteen minutes, there 
was a general quiet of the whole system, which before was 
continually writhed with involuntary twitchings and convul- 
sions. 

It is worthy of note, that while this process was going on, 
the first subject, still "asleep," was thrown into strong spasms, 
which continued during the remainder of his sleep. The Rev. 
Mr. Gannett asked Dr. C. if he intended to transfer those 
symptoms (of chorea) from the affected lad to the first >ul>|< 
Dr. C. replied that he had no such intention, and, moreover, 
that he was as much surprised as any one present at the cir- 
cumstance. To the question put by the Chairman, " Is the 
boy in an unnatural state ? " Dr. Stedman replied, " He ap- 
pears to be in an unnatural state. Those spasms. I think, 
could not be feigned." 

The committee adjourned, to meet again on Saturday, at 10 
o'clock, A. M. 

Saturday, June 26th. 
The committee met pursuant to adjournment, but, without 
attending to any experiments, adjourned to Monday, at 10 
o'clock, A. M. 



appendix. 5:27 

Monday, June 2Sth. 
The Committee met according to adjournment. A letter 
from the Hon. Judge Thacher was read. Dr. C. operated first 
upon his own subjects, with more or less of apparent success. 
Jt was then suggested by a member, that it might be more sa- 
ti>factory to the Committee, to have some subject not known 
by Dr. C, but with whom the Committee were better ac- 
quainted, and that there was a gentlemen present who was 
Willing to subject himself to the process, and who was believed 
to be susceptible. Dr. Dted to make an attempt. The 

gentleman alluded to was then presented. Several medical 

•ne who were the strongest 

disbelievers of Animal M tgnetism, expressed their high com- 
mendatioo of the character of the new subject, for unimpeach- 
able im- attainments a- a physician and a 

Scholar, and said they knew he would enter into no scheme 
for misleading tin- an - r any other. Dr. C, then per- 

formed In- nana] for about ten minutes, when the pa- 

tient had gradually fallen si Dr. C. pointed his 

band towards the (ace of in- patient, he rery suddenly, with a 

shaking of tie' bead and - . awoke, and, half smiling, 

. and continued so for about ten 
. but Dr. C« looking sternly at him, he reclined his 

I, and in a!. out i, red asleep again* 

In a few seconds be awoke a- before. He was again asleep 

und. wseeonSds ihen waking and beginning 

[p| .im how he felt, be pot bis hands upon the arms of his 

chair to • fide thought be was now at liberty 

to leave, and r<»-e half way up ; when (Dr. I '. looking him 

ily in the fell back again into the chair, a< if too 

a to rise. He then ros rpendicular posture pn his 

and under tie stances and appearances, sank 

into \i\> chair. j sin upon bin feet, 
and turn Is the Commit oiog to believe be 
was now at liberty, and oof perceiving Dr. C, who stood close 

behind him, with lice ai. Sternly bent upon him, at- 

tempted again, with seeming eagernest tain how he 

felt; but he faltered every two or three word-, pressing his 

1 hard a^ain-t his eye- two or three limes, a- though par- 



528 APPENDIX. 

tially faint, and breaking off in the middle of a sentence, with- 
out finishing any intelligible explanation, and having his hand 
again pressed over his eyes, rubbing them as though but par- 
tially awakened from deep sleep, he turned to take his seat, when 
he discovered that Dr. C. was close behind him, and intent upon 
him. He then passed a distance of about three steps, Dr. C. 
now for the first time leaving him, and spoke connectedly and 
with an easy freedom. He said he felt a pleasant thrill in his 
arms and hands. "I did not lose my consciousness entirely, 
but felt confused, as you see I am. I attempted twice to speak, 
while under the power of Dr. C, but could not." He says he 
never has spoken to Dr. C. but once, which was casually yes- 
terday at the Natural History room, nor seen him more than 
twice, or ever communicated with him upon this subject. [He 
subsequently declined a request of the Committee to submit 
himself again to experiment.] 

The father of young Mr. Beals, a respectable merchant in 
this city, is present, and says he has not before seen his son so 
quiet for seven years, as he has been since operated upon by 
Dr. C. 

The Committee adjourned to half-past 10, A. M«, to-morrow. 

Tuesday, June '29th. 
The Committee met pursuent to adjournment. Voted, to 
choose a sub-committee of five to examine the subject before 
and after being put into the so called magnetic state. And 
Drs. Storer, Lewis, Morrell, J. II. Lane, and J. W, James, 
Esq., were chosen accordingly. The boy Frederick was ex- 
amined by the sub-committee, who found nothing remarkable. 
Dr. C. commenced at twenty-two minutes before 12, the boy 
declaring, under the process, that he would not be put to sleep 
by Dr. C, because he had magnetized Mr. Beals. In about 
seven minutes, there are strong twitchings of the muscles over 
the whole body, similar in appearance to those of the lad with 
chorea, who is present, and affirms that he has not felt any 
twitchings since Dr. C. began this time to magnetize Frederick, 
but prior to this had felt them, though comparatively slight, 
since being magnetized by Dr. C. This present cessation of 
his tetanus, was thought worth noting, though the magnetizing 



APPENDIX. 5-29 

of Frederick, or his having the convulsions at this time, might 
have nothing to do with it. The Rev. Mr. Turnbull explained 
it, by saying, that the present quiet of Mr. Seal's muscles might 
be produced by his close attention to the present operation on 
Frederick ; and the Rev. Mr. T. asked Mr. B. if he felt calm 
when listening to his pastor, the Rev. Mr. tStow, and being 
much interested I lie replied, that be was more excited. The 
sub-committee was requested to give an opinion in regard to 
the muscular twitchings of Pre ; erick, which had continued a 
long time. Dr. Storei stated his opinion, that they might be 
feigned — asked to say whether he thought they were feigned; 
he Bays, M I should choose not to be driven to an answer, but if 
insist, I give it aa my opinion that they on feigned. Dr. 
Morrell i I bis concurrence. Dr. Lane was not pre- 

pared to give an opinion. Air. James doubted if they could be 
wia out.] Dr. C. offered to have the boy left 
in that position, (apparently an uncomfortable one), with gen- 
tlemen to watch him bj turn-, for two, three, or four days, to 
whether this state \ led. 

Mr ., was introduced 

to the Committee by Dr. Storer, who vouched for his good 

char 1 that there could he no collusion between him 

and Dr. C, and added — ° It' he shall -ay Dr. C. puts him to 
sleep, 1 will believe it. Dr. C. made a trial. The only effect 
produced [at this time] was a heaviness of the arms, as if from 
great fatigue, and a strong contraction of the little linger which 
he tried to overcome but said he could not. 

Dr. C. had said to some members, that Frederick was now 
in an unusually line state for clairvoyance, when John C. Park, 
Es>p, whom Dr. C. had declared to have the requisite continu- 
ity of thought, was put in communication with the lad. Mr. 
Park, without giving any intimation of bis intended course, 
and avoiding all leading questions, asked the boy as to what 
he saw. The first two or three answers not being satisfactory 
to Mr. P., he willed him back again, he said, to where we 
were sitting, and then proceeded again. Each succeeding an- 
swer, as Mr. P. declares, was correctly descriptive of the same 
things, in the same order, and at the same times that Mr. P. 
had the ideas of them in his mind, directing attention to them- 
45 



530 APPENDIX, 

Mr. Park's Question. — 1. What do you see ? 

Frederick's Answer. — Some thing high. 

Mr. Park's statement made on each answer after the conclusion 
of the whole experiments. — The building west side of Bowdoin 
square. 

Mr. P. — 2. "What color is it ? 

Ans. — Black or white — not very black. 

Mr. P.'s statement. — It is of granite. 

Mr. P. — 3. What is there about it ? are there any streets ? 

Ans. — One on each side. 

Mr. P.'s statement. — Such is the fact. 

Mr. P. — 4. What do you see now ? 

Ans. — A door. 

Mr. P.' s statement. — I viewed in imagination the door of the 
jail in Leverett street. 

Mr. P. — 5. Any thing about it ? 

Ans. — Only the steps there. 

Mr. P.'s statement. — There are steps to it. 

Mr. P. — 6. Now pass into that door with me through an 
entry, and what do you see ? 

Ans. — Oh ! a great many doors. 

Mr. P. 's statement. — I was in imagination at this time, and 
during the two following questions, in a hall of the jail, hav- 
ing in it nine doors all in view. 

Mr. P. — 7. How many i count them. 

Ans. — 1, 2, 3—1 can't count them. 

Mr, P. — 8. Yes you can — I can, and so can you. Try again. 

A nSt — 1 ? 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 — oh ! there's more than that ; I can't 
count them. It's a cold place — 1 don't want to stay here. 

Mr. P. — 9. Well, then, we'll leave this place and go to an- 
other. What do you see ? 

Ans. — A door. 

Mr. P. 's statement. — I contemplated the door of William- 
son's cell. 

Mr. P.— 10. Well, we'll go into that door. 

Ans. — Oh, we can't, it's all barred up. We can't go in. 

AfK P.'s statement. — It is kept bolted, o( course. 

Mr. P. — 11. Why not? Yes we can. We will go in. 
Are we in ? 



APPENDIX. 531 

Ans. — Yes. 

Mr. P. — 12. What do you see there ? 

Ans. — A man. 

Mr. P. — 13. Any body else there ? 

Ans. — No ; one man and no more. 

Mr. P.'s statement. — Williamson alone is kept there. 

Mr. P. — 14. What is he doing? 

Ans. — Sitting there. 

Mr. P.— 15. What does he sit on ? 

Ans. — Some thing dirty. 

Mr. Ph statement. — Their beds are dirty. 

Mr. P. — 16. Do you see any thing else. 

Ans. — Only the black thing over there. 

Mr. /Vs statement. — 1 knew not what the boy meant at the 
time, but went directly tu the jail, and Williamson had a black 
article up against the wall to lean against as he sat. 

Mr. P. — 17. Now we'll turn round, and what do you see ? 

Ans. — A small white thing, round. 

Mr. PA >t itu/i'jit. — A tub, for necessary purposes, which is 
round. 

Mr. P.— 1& What is it lor? 

I. — Km nasty — I don't want to tell. [Exhibiting great 
ist.| 

Mr. P.*! jkAammd. — Comedy described] thus. 

Mr. P.— 19. Well, you've told enough about that. What 
do you see now I 

I, — A window. 

Mr, P.'s stattmtnt. — I was directing attention to the win- 
dow. 

Mr. P. — 20. Look out at that window. 

Ans. — 1 can't. 

Mr. P.— SI. Why? 

An*. — It'^ dirty. 

Mr. P.'s stattmint. — I was wishing to have him speak of 
the iron grates to it, but do not comprehend bib answer. 

Mr. P. then said — Now we'll go to another part. What 
do you see ? But the answers to this and another question 
not being satisfactory, Mr. P. said — Well, I don't know where 
you are. You are where I'm not, and proceeded no further. 



532 APPENDIX. 

The following is Mr. Park's certificate on the above : — 

" I hereby certify that the expressions above attributed to 
me, are, in substance, correct. John C. Park/' 

Adjourned to half past 10 o'clock, Thursday, A. M. 

Thursday, July 1st. 

The Committee met pursuant to adjournment. 

Voted, That Dr. Gregerson (he being present) be requested 
to state his late experience upon the subject of the Commit- 
tee's inquiries. Dr. G. rose and gave a very interesting ac- 
count in detail of the manner of his late conviction of the real- 
ity of some of the phenomena asserted by the advocates of 
Animal Magnetism. lie says he began two or th ngs 

since, while entirely faithless upon this to manipulate 

upon a gentleman bap] with him, who was so far 

a skeptic, as to have said shortly before, that 1 Dr. C. 

would try to magnetize him before his evening audience, and 
he would feign sleep until Dr. C. announced that he was in 
the magnetic condition, and tie D Lghteft 

sently the subject appeared asleep. When he wai 
ter awake again, ho w , Dr. G. of doing to him, 

he had said he would to Dr. Collycr, i. p. fei \ 
he (the subject) declared he bad ;:en 

questioned, it appeared be was ntt< rka- 

ble noise that bad d in the mean time, as also of 

G.'s going to shut the door Since this first time, Dr. G. thinks 
he has several times put him asleep most unequivocally, and 
elicited somnambulic phenomena. [Th* ittee had the 

opportunity of witnessing this by Dr. Gl wer 

room of the Temple, July 6.] 

Dr. Dana, the secretary, being unwell, S. F. Tiympton was 
chosen secretary pro tempore. 

An unsuccessful attempt was made to i new 

subject. 

At 12 o'clock, Dr. C. commences operating upon Mr. Stone, 
before mentioned, in whom gentlemen had expressed their con- 
fidence. At about twelve minutes past L2 o'clock, he stands 



APPENDIX. 533 

up, and Dr. C. continues his "willing" for a minute or two 

longer. Then Dr. C. ceasing and stepping aside, Mr. Stone is 

asked to state how he had felt, Sec, But he stood as he was, 

mute and motionless for more than half a minute, as though 

he heeded nothing that was said or done, and with his eyes 

still fixed as they had been. He is asked, " Can't you speak ? " 

He soon faintly replies. M \\ - m" but still continues with his 

eyes and body fixed as before, and in about ten seconds, says, 

" I do fed very peculiarly, indeed," still without having stirred 

Or limb. In about one minute more he seemed more self- 

in the following narration : — 

" I had a sort of confuted feeling, which 1 have not recovered 

from u'. When I waa put the question how 1 felt, I 

thought I would answer, and tried to do bo, but felt somehow 
nut sensation in my whole 

id do so even now ; and when 
Dr. I me to myself, 1 felt 1 could 

stand th< length of time, and 

had • m to move. When you first asked 

me U ill around, and yet 

1 con. 

I thirty-two ininu' . Joins begins to 

. ind at thirty-seven minutes past 12 lie 

• ir. Jones asked bim various questions, as to 

what be (Mr. J.) bad on i. .a the times the questions 

rect, and bo with 
other things, Dr. C. being kept some dis- 

• 

. Mr. Turnbull moved that the labors of the com- 
mit Iter some discussion, the vote 
irly unanimous against it. 
The Committee adjourned to 3 o'clock, P. H., of Tuesday 
next. 

BSDAY, July Gth. 

The committee met according to adjournment. 

Dr. C. relates that Mr. Stone, student of the Medical School, 
to which Dr. Storer lectures, and in whom gentlemen had ex- 
pressed their confidence, had told him that he (Mr. Stone) had 



534 APPENDIX. 

magnetized one of his friends, Mr. ; and Dr. C. adds, 

that he himself, on introduction has done the same — all which 
Mr. Stone, being present, confirms. 

"While in default of a subject, and there was no other present 
business before the committee, considerable debate arose on the 
question of Dr. Gregerson stating the experience he had had 
since the last meeting. It was voted that he be requested to 
state it. Dr. G. acknowledged he had had some new expe- 
rience, but declined stating it, because the vote was not unani- 
mous. A few had voted in the negative, saying that the char- 
acter of Dr. Gregerson was such as might give his statements 
more weight with this committee than they should have. 

Mr. , the friend, before mentioned, of Mr. Stone, is 

brought in, and submits to the operation, only on the condition 
expressed in the following vote, viz : — 

Voted, That the name of no new subject be mentioned out 
of this hall. 

Voted, That the sub-committee, appointed June 20th, officiate 

during the experiment on Mr. ; and in the absence of 

Dr. Lane, Dr. Adams is substituted. 

Dr. Storer and others, who are still skeptics, expres- them- 
selves as entirely satisfied of the conscientious and veracious 

character of Mr. , and that there is no collusion 

him and Dr. C. Age 26. 

The sub-committee report a soft pulse in the patient, at 96 
per minute — skin moist — hands rather cold and moist — Dr. 
C.'s pulse at 96, He commences the operation at twenty 
minutes before five. At thirteen minutes before five, the pa- 
tient having appeared asleep for a few minutes, Dr. C. applies 
his hand above the patient's, as if to attract it upward — when 
directly the fingers of the sleeper begin to twitch and tremble, 
and presently his whole hand to tremble or vibrate through the 
space of at least an inch. Dr. C. now applies his, above the 
patient's other hand, and then that too twitches and trembles 
in like manner. In the same manner Dr. C. applies a common 
horse-shoe magnet, and with the same effect. Dr. C. says the 
patient is now in a semi-state. At two minutes Km 
o'clock, Dr. C. performs a few more passes, and asks, k% Air. 
, do you see me ? " to which Mr. answers, M Yes.'' 



APPENDIX, 535 

" Any one else ? n Answer, " No." To calls, first imitating 

those of Dr. C, and then very loud calls of Mr. , made at 

his ears, by Dr. Storer, Dr. IMorrell, Dr. Adams, and others, he 
returns no answer. Dr. C. then says more gently, M Did you 

hear any noise, Mr. ? were, " No." A loud noise 

was her< md Dr. ' " Did you hear any noise 

then Other loud and very loud noises 

were then m h of them, the same question 

- pal by Di I the same answer given. The patient's 

reports that " the eyeball seems 

re an involuntary vibrating or 

roll:.. ported at 96, the 

sail.' tie the nose, ears, ribs, and 

otln ; rely ; while his brother, now 

I with other persons, he is very 

i nil answers from 

him in ■ M mental • Then being 

in which ! - " in the bar." 

OS iii the bar." 

A most U t lick 

. who had 

than fifteen minutes, 
and that no other 'it there in the mean 

time. In I - to the lower room in the 

pie, being to how many persons 

then I ; i\e." Ln fact there were four — 

but Dr. « n and he answers 

wing, by request : 4l What has 

of them in his band? 91 lie replies, " foot." It is 

rted thai the thing beld up was in fact a chair, and that it 

held by I QOW a-ked the patient what 

foot it was he meant, and b< " of a stool* 91 

At fourteen mini .. Dr. C. commences the upward 

ke the patient. At twelve minutes before six he 
begins gradually to move his head, and at ten minutes before 
has it erect agaiftSt the chair, sighs deeply, shrugs the 
shoulders, and presses the hands against his face and eyes, 
rubbing the latter, and stretching as if just waked from a deep 
sleep. Thus his sleeping lasted for an hour and ten minutes, 



536 APPENDIX. 

during all which time every part of him, unless moved by per- 
sons present, was perfectly composed as in sleep, except so far 
as was necessary to perform the acts above described, and ex- 
cept that a clapping of hands at his ear produced a slight mo- 
tion of the head, — and did the same on repetition. 

Mr. , gradually recovering himself, begins to remark that 

his arms were quite stiff and sore, from rowing yesterday, when 
he came here, so that he could not bend them, but are now 
limber and free from soreness, and his back which was quite 
stiff and sore when he came here, has now but little of soreness. 
Asked by the Rev. Dr. Greenwood — " How long do you think 
you have been asleep ? " he says, " About ten minutes " — " I 
recollect I saw Dr. Collyer and no one else." [Dr. C. says this 
must have been when he was in the semi state.] u I feel just 
as if waked from a natural sleep — I felt no one handle or touch 
me during my sleep, nor recollect any visions or dreams, or of 
hearing any noises." The Rev. Mr. ( Jannett Bays to him, u You 
pressed your chest and crossed your arms against your breast 
when waking, as though pained. Did you feel any pain during 
the last four or five minutes ? " He replies, u Not at all." He 
says he tried not to go to sleep, and thought of every thing he 
could to keep awake, — never saw any magnetizing till be saw 
it lately here by Dr. Collyer, and that he alv. a the leg 

of a chair the foot of it. 

Voted, That each of the sub-committee be requested to state 
his opinion upon the facts observed. 

7)/-. Storer — "I was hitherto entirely skeptical, and consider 
this last as the only satisfactory experiment I have seen« I 
have now no doubt that Mr. was in an unnatural stmt 

Dr. Lewis — "I have had no doubts o( the other subjects 
having been in the unnatural state, and, of course, have none 
that this was so." 

Dr. Morrcll — states substantially the same as Dr. Storer. 

Dr. Adams — " I feel obliged to say, I think the patient was 
in a very strange and unnatural state of nerve." 

J. W. James, Esq. — concurs generally in the foregoing state- 
ments. 

Mr. Stone — says "I do not hesitate to say, I think Mr. 

was in an unnatural state, having seen him so twice before, 



APPENDIX. 537 

producing it once myself, and having known him intimately as 
a room-mate." 

Dr. Storcr — in reply to a question, says that he has now no 
doubt that this unnatural state was produced by Dr. Collyer. 
" I have before been a skeptic, but am now free to say I am so 
no longer.'' 

The foregoing record of this meeting was then read, and 
sanctioned by all concerned. On motion of Dr. Storer, 

I, That the unanimous thanks of this committee be 

presented to the gentleman who has submitted himself to the 

tions of Dr. Collyer this afternoon. 

The committee baring ascertained from Dr. Collyer, that he 

' some public i m from them, after having 

convinced them at th of ^o much trouble; and after 

ir. Gannett, Dr. Greenwood, and A. IYabody, 

it, and, 

. in which Eta . Green- 

.rnbull, Jones, Mil tapin, Drs. Storer, 

. 1 others, took 
following resolution was adopted, unanimously, with 

R( train froi ing 

principle of " Animal 

. it, in the experiments of 

l which 
aition of collusion, or by a 
cal princ am to them. 

Aft< ling forth lionoftbi the meeting 

5, Chairman. 



It may. perba] action to ipect log- 

imine the fol- 

dculation oo of chances— showing the 

l improbabilil ct answers to 

.Mr. Park'- questic in the above report We shall 



538 APPENDIX, 

refer to them by their numbers, as above given. It will be 
seen that we omit in our calculation many of the correct an- 
swers, just as if in those cases there were no other thing which 
his mind could be led to fix on for his guess, and, therefore, it 
were no guess at all. This, however is far from true, and is 
making a very large concession. — 

1. In relation to the third answer, suppose (to be within 
bounds) that only one in four of the buildings in the city has 
a street on each side of it ; and the chances of giving this 
answer with correctness, in a mere guess, are seen to be one 
in four, and the ratio of probability is 1-4 

2. On the eighth answer : in what proportion, let it be 
asked, of all the places within doors, can be seen at once, 
seven and more doors, i. e., as many as eight ? Proba- 
bly not one in fifty. Let, then, the ratio be ... . 1-50 

3. On the tenth answer : suppose that, of all the inner 
doors in the city, one-twentieth of them are thus barred 
up at mid-day, and the chances of guessing such a de- 
scription, as the boy did, with correctness, would be only 
one in twenty; and the ratio of probability in guessing 
thus, 1-20 

4. On the thirteenth answer : suppose that, of all the 
apartments in the city, the proportion which have in them, 
between one and two o'clock, P. M., just one person, 
and not more, and that person a man, and not a woman 
or child, is (we will say, to be within bounds,) one in 
five ; and the ratio of probability for one's guessing thus, 
rightly, would be 1-5 

5. On the fourteenth answer, suppose that, of all the 
articles that would be likely to take attention in all the 
apartments of the city, not more than one in three could 

be called round, and the ratio of probability is . . 1-3 

6. On the eighteenth answer, it may be safely said that 
of the articles in our apartments, not more than one in 
five could well be thus described in such severe Saxon, 

and the ratio of probability is 1-5 

7. On the nineteenth, suppose other visible articles in 
apartments will average as numerous as windows, and 
then the chances of guessing a window with correctness 
will be one in two, and the ratio 1-2 



APPENDIX. 539 

Now multiply all these ratios together — (according to Edin. 
Encyc, Art. Chances, or Hedge's Logic), 

i X ^j X jftj X i X £ X i X £=^^73-^ 

and the chances of guessing correctly in all these instances, 
taken together, prove to he only one in more than half a mil- 
lion. Towards making up this number, each of the supposed 
failures counts only one by way of oflbet 

We think the estimate we have given of the probabilities in 
the instances we have selected above, is far less than they 
would bear, to say nothing of the correct answers we have 
omitted. But unless on insay this estimate as too large, 

he must admit (600,000 to 1) either that one of our citizens, 
whom we are accustomed tu tru-t, is duping the public on an 
u-ive and difficult plan, or else that there is something in 
clair\ 

This is nut the only case of this kind in which, in order to 

. it will be necessary to implicate, tu a 

similar certainty, (L e. many tb tO One) the veracity of 

.e of our 1 Me citizens. We think, therefore, 

the a: i ;uus, to say the h 

B. h. c. 



1 ih/, indui 






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